US agencies on global hunt for persons named in Osama files

Washington, May 19: American intelligence agencies have launched a massive global manhunt for individuals mentioned in the "treasure trove" of terrorist materials obtained from the Abbottabad hideout of Osama bin Laden, a media report said.

The entire US intelligence community is busy pursuing leads from files recovered from Laden's house in Abbottobad, to determine whether bin Laden's plots had gone beyond the discussion and planning phase to concrete threats, ABC News said in a report quoting government sources.

Sources familiar to bin Laden's handwritten journal and computer files told ABC News that names of suspected al Qaeda operatives had been found in the files, and that an intense effort was under way to find the individuals attached to those names.

An intensive search is currently going on in the travel logs to check if any of these individuals ever tried to sneak inside the US or they were successful in their effort.

The CIA-has set up an inter-agency task force to go through the materials recovered at bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad.

US intelligence has been trying to determine if the names in the files are real or aliases, and has called on Great Britain and Canada to help it nail the identifications, the news channel said.

"The names that they are finding are extremely important," former FBI Agent Brad Garret was quoted as saying.

"I believe that they're under a lot of pressure to resolve and identify these people as quickly as possible," he said.

"Some officials have expressed shock that bin Laden kept so much sensitive material with him in what has been described as the most significant terrorism trove ever discovered," the report said.

PTI