‘Osama followed developments in Kashmir, Headley trial’

Washington, November 2 : Osama bin Laden closely followed developments in Kashmir and the trial of Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley in the 2008 Mumbai attack case, according to documents seized from a Pakistani compound where the al-Qaeda founder was killed in a US raid in 2011. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Wednesday released 470,000 additional files seized in May 2011 when US Navy SEALs burst into the Abbottabad compound and shot dead Laden.
The files include Laden’s son’s wedding video and diaries left by the Saudi-born militant.
The documents revealed that Laden closely followed news related to the arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Headley and was a regular reader of some of the top Indian publications.
An Indian Express article titled ‘Omar Sheikh’s Pak handler Ilyas Kashmiri also handled Headley’ was found from the computer of Laden in Abbottabad. The article was dated November 16, 2009.
An article ‘Fears of air-borne terrorists strikes in India, UK’ published in Sri Lanka Guardian was also found in a separate file on Laden’s computer. A Press Trust of India story headlined ‘Al-Qaeda helping Taliban to destabilise Pakistan Government: Gates’, dated February 9, 2010, was also found on Laden’s computer. Another article found on his computer was about the coded communications between Headley and his Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) links. The news was published by The Times of India on November 15, 2009.