British citizen, Retired Brigadier Usman Khalid, has been accused of being the informer of the CIA, whose information led to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden in 2011.
Usman Khalid was living in London for 35 years until he passed away from cancer a year ago, at the age of 79. His family have expressed their anger, due to him being publicly identified as the source of the leak of information.
His family members have denied Khalid's involvement and have stated that he was not responsible for anything.
Deliberation regarding the identification of the unnamed source has been abundant after the publication of an article by Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning US journalist, in the London Review of Books earlier this month.
Seymour Hersh suggested that the unnamed senior officer in the Pakistani army was the “walk-in” who provided information of the secret hideout, in exchange for a hefty amount of a $25 million premium. Additionally, Hersh also states that the informer was supposed to also be rewarded with US citizenship and to be alive and well in America.
However, Khalid's family have lambasted these allegations. Usman Khalid's son, Abid Khalid said, “It simply doesn’t make sense. At the time that this was supposed to have happened, he was suffering from cancer and in and out of hospital. My father hadn’t visited the USA since 1976 and had lived in the UK since 1979, so there was no question of him or his family getting American citizenship. He had no contact with the CIA and knew nothing about Osama Bin Laden, other than what he read in the newspapers, just like everyone else. He was politically very vocal, so he was an easy target.”
In his father's defence, he further stated, “My father was an honourable and patriotic man. He was also a caring, family man and would be horrified to be linked to the fake polio vaccination programme. He would have been devastated to have been linked to anything which would put the lives of innocent people, especially children at risk, especially in the country he loved.”
