Doctor Admits Treating Osama bin Laden

28/11/2002| IslamWeb

A prominent Pakistani doctor who admitted treating Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders before and after Sept. 11 said Wednesday that the al-Qaeda mastermind was in excellent health and showed no signs of kidney failure. Dr. Amer Aziz, recently released after being held incommunicado and interrogated for a month by FBI and CIA agents, told The Associated Press he knew nothing of al-Qaida's plans. He rejected allegations he helped the organization in its efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

Speaking at his clinic in Lahore, Aziz said he met bin Laden twice - in 1999 after the al-Qaida leader hurt his back falling off a horse in southern Afghanistan, and in November 2001, two months after the terrorist attacks, when Aziz was summoned to treat another senior al-Qaida leader, Mohammed Atef, in Kabul.

Bin Laden was in strong health on both occasions, said Aziz, a British-educated orthopedic surgeon. He said he saw no evidence that the al-Qaida leader had kidney disease, as has been widely reported, or that he was on dialysis.

"He was walking. He was healthy. He just told me to give good treatment to his man (Atef), that he was a very important man," Aziz said of the November meeting, in which al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was also present.

"If you are on dialysis, you have a special look. I didn't see any of that," Aziz said, adding that he also gave bin Laden a complete physical in 1999 and found no signs of kidney problems.

Reports of bin Laden's poor health - and his deteriorating appearance in video tapes released shortly after U.S. bombing began in Afghanistan in October 2001 - fueled speculation that he might have died. Intelligence officials now say an audiotape released last month was recorded recently and was the voice of the al-Qaida leader.

American officials say that they have received persistent reports that bin Laden was wounded or suffering some kind of kidney ailment, but none has been verified.

Aziz said that when he went to Afghanistan last November to set up a surgical unit at the University of Jalalabad, near the border with Pakistan, he had no idea that he was going to meet bin Laden.

"I was stunned," he said. "I thought, 'This is the most wanted man in the world.' But he seemed so calm."

A day after he treated Atef for a slipped disk, the al-Qaida military chief was killed by U.S. bombing, Aziz said, adding that he attended Atef's funeral.

The bearded Aziz, who speaks fluent English, said it never occurred to him to turn in bin Laden. He said he had been traveling to Afghanistan since 1989 to give medical support to Islamic fighters, a time when it was "kosher for everyone to support the mujahedeen," or holy warriors. In those days, anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan were supported by the United States.

"Different countries have since made a somersault, but I had no plans to do so myself," he said. "Anyone who is fighting for what is right, it is my duty to treat them."

Aziz said his American interrogators grilled him on bin Laden's health, asked him for the names of those he treated, and accused him of helping al-Qaida obtain weapons of mass destruction.

"The allegations were stunning, to say the least," the doctor said. "I was told that I had been involved in helping al-Qaida with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons - the whole lot."

Aziz said he had no training or knowledge in making weapons. He said he was never privy to al-Qaida plans - before or after Sept. 11.

"They said: 'Since you have been close to them for so long, you must be a confidante and they must confide in you,'" Aziz said. "I said: 'You may eat and drink and travel with people. You don't disclose you're business plans to them.'"

Aziz said U.S. agents - seven men and one woman - took turns interrogating him for up to 19 hours at a stretch. He said he was held after his Oct. 21 arrest in a locked room at a safe-house in Rawalpindi. Each morning, he would be blindfolded and driven to another house about a half-hour away, where the interrogations were held.

Aziz said he was not physically abused and that his treatment was good, although he complained the agents smoked heavily - more than a pack a day each in the small interrogation room. "I've never smoked so much passively in my life," he said.

Aziz said he told the agents everything he knew. One American interrogator gave him a book on al-Qaida, "Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America," written by an anonymous senior U.S.

intelligence agent, which Aziz said he read during his incarceration.

He said the agents threatened him with years in jail and offered him money and a new life in the United States if he cooperated. He said the repetition of their questions got to him.

"Once I broke down and wept because they wouldn't believe me. It was so frustrating," he said.

In the end, Aziz said, the agents let him go because there was no evidence against him. He said that before his Nov. 19 release, the agents each apologized to him for putting him through the ordeal, then returned him to his family in Lahore.

He said he is trying not to be bitter.

"It's Allah's will. When I was there I would pray that Allah would give me something good to take out of this," Aziz said. "I think he has. I am a much more patient man now, and I have learned a lot. But my family has been through hell."

PHOTO CAPTION

A prominent Pakistani doctor Amer Aziz, who admits treating Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders before and after the Sept. 11 attacks, listens to a question during an interview with Associated Press in his Clinic in Lahore, Pakistan, Wed, Nov 27, 2002. Aziz was recently released without official explanation after being held incommunicado and interrogated for a month by FBI and CIA agents. (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary)