NEW DELHI, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- A Pakistani biographer of suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden says the Saudi dissident is alive.
Journalist Hamid Mir told India's Star News TV channel that bin Laden had perhaps escaped toward the Iran border in southern Afghanistan.
On Tuesday, an unnamed Taliban leader had told a Pakistani newspaper that bin Laden had died of a lung infection and was buried in the Tora Bora Mountains. Other news reports speculate that bin Laden could have crossed the border to escape into Pakistan along with hundreds of al Qaida activists.
Mir, the only journalist to have interviewed bin Laden after Sept. 11, said conflicting reports on the suspected terrorist's whereabouts, especially about his death, were being spread to ease the U.S.-led hunt for the Saudi dissident blamed for masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Mir, however, did not substantiate his claim that bin Laden is alive.
