Taliban plots to free bin Laden’s family with kidnap hostage

US Navy Seals killed bin Laden in a May helicopter-borne raid on his compound near a Pakistan Army base.

They took the corpse with them, but left at least two of his wives and several children in the house who were detained by Pakistani authorities.

Pakistan’s interior ministry warned of the plot in a letter sent to top security officials on August 23 – just three days before gunmen seized Shahbaz Taseer, the son of a wealthy provincial governor who was killed by an Islamist militant earlier this year.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said there was no evidence that the group that had seized Mr Taseer from the streets of the Punjab provincial capital, Lahore, was hoping to exchange him for bin Laden’s family members.

Reporters obtained a copy of the letter, stamped “secret” today.

It said the information that led to the warning was reliable. It does not say which Pakistani official the Taliban plans to kidnap.

Pakistan has reportedly released Taliban prisoners before in exchange for kidnapped government officials and army officers.

Mr Taseer’s kidnapping was the second high-profile abduction in Lahore. On August 15, gunmen seized a 70-year-old American aid expert from his house. The man, Warren Weinstein, is still missing.

Meanwhile, Pakistani police said they were preventing foreign journalists and other visitors from getting close to the bin Laden house ahead of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The Danish Ambassador to Pakistan Ambassador Uffe Wolffhechel and his wife, and two French journalists, were among several people detained this week in the Pakistani garrison town which is home to a prestigious military academy.

They were held briefly before being allowed to return to the capital, Islamabad, police in the northern town said.

The US operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in early May triggered embarrassing questions over how the CIA was able to track him down while Pakistan’s powerful army and spy agencies could not when he was living close by a major military base. Abbottabad police officer Karim Khan said the compound is regarded as evidence in a criminal inquiry.