A US businessman has said he had told federal investigators the location of Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan years before his killing and is now seeking a $ 25m reward.
A letter obtained by a foreign news agency from a Chicago-based law firm representing Tom Lee says the 63-year-old gem merchant reported the location of bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in 2003.
The letter sent by the Loevy & Loevy law firm to FBI Director James Comey in August says a Pakistani intelligence agent told Lee that he escorted bin Laden and his family from Peshawar to Abbottabad.
According to the letter, Lee shared the information with Customs and FBI agents telling them that the Pakistani agent “was a member of a family that Lee had done business with for decades,” the letter said, and the agent and his family opposed bin Laden.
A request to speak with Lee and Michael Kanovitz, the lawyer who signed the letter, was made to the law firm. The FBI did not comment.
Bin Laden was killed in May 2011 during a US Navy Seals raid in Abottabad. US officials said the Abbottabad house was not built until 2005 whereas Pakistani officials have said that he moved there in the summer of that year.
The letter said Lee made “numerous attempts” to claim his reward but received no responses.
“Lee precisely identified the whereabouts of the most notorious terrorist of our era, a man responsible for the World Trade Centre attacks,” the letter said. Lee told the Grand Rapids Press in an email that he could not understand why the government waited to act.
“It disturbs me, and it should disturb every American, that I told them exactly where bin Before that. The last known location of bin Laden was in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in 2001, whereas the CIA believed he had taken shelter in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan.
