By David Edwards and Jeremy Gantz
May 10, 2009
RawStory.com
Two weeks ago, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zadari suggested that Osama bin Laden might be dead, saying that U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agencies had been unable to detect any sign of the world’s most wanted man since an audio recording of his voice was released in March.
Sunday morning, Zadari went further: “I don’t think he’s alive,” the president told NBC’s David Gregory. “I have a strong feeling and reason to believe that.” Zadari continued: “I have asked my counterparts in the American intelligence services and they haven’t heard [from] him in seven years.”
The CIA has not confirmed that the voice purporting to be bin Laden in the March recording was in fact bin Laden. U.S. officials have claimed that bin Laden could be hiding in the mountainous region along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Just before saying that he believes bin Laden is dead, Zadari told Gregory that America has “been looking [in Afghanistan] for eight years… You lost him in Torah Borah, I didn’t.”
But Pakistan is still part of the worldwide “lookout brigade” for the alleged terrorism mastermind, Zadari said.
This video is from NBC’s Meet the Press, broadcast May 10, 2009.