Former President General Pervez Musharraf (Retd) categorically denied the ISI - at any level - knew the al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was living in Pakistan. He told BBC Newsnight that it was "very difficult to prove non-complicity" between the ISI and al Qaeda elements. United States claims Bin Laden had been in Abbottabad for five years before he was killed on May 2, 2011, in a US Navy Seal raid.
Musharraf said he had been "surprised and shocked" to discover Bin Laden had been living in Abbottabad. Neither he nor his senior government officials had colluded in hiding the fugitive, he said, adding that he did not believe Bin Laden could have been living in Abbottabad when he was President between 1999 and 2007.
"I can't imagine in my wildest dreams that the intelligence agency was doing something without telling me, so therefore there was no complicity at the strategic level," he told Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman in an interview. That being the case, he said the spy agency had demonstrated "negligence, ineptitude and failure" in failing to detect the world's most wanted man.
In the wide ranging Newsnight interview, Musharraf criticised the US government for favouring its relationship with India over its relationship with Pakistan. The 67-year old also accused the US of turning a blind eye to elements of the Indian state which he claimed were sympathetic to terrorism. "Every time, Pakistan is the rogue," he said in the interview at his London home. He said he planned to return to his homeland at some stage to contest elections, whether presidential or prime ministerial. He said he was confident he could fight off any charges against him.
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