Pakistan's top military spy agency has arrested five Pakistanis who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the months leading up to the US military raid on al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, according to American officials.
The Saudi-born terrorist, who had evaded capture for a decade, was killed in a top secret operation involving a small team of US Special Forces in Pakistan's garrison town of Abbottabad.
Pakistan's detention of five CIA informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting bin Laden's Abbottabad compound in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan, The New York Times reports.
It comes at a time when the Obama administration is seeking Pakistan's support in brokering an endgame in the war in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The fate of the CIA informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear, but American officials said that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta raised the issue when he travelled to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers, according to the report.
Some in Washington see the arrests as illustrative of the disconnect between Pakistani and American priorities at a time when they are supposed to be allies in the fight against Al Qaeda, the report said.
Instead of hunting down the support network that allowed Bin Laden to live comfortably for years, the Pakistani authorities are arresting those who assisted in the raid that killed the world's most wanted man, it added.
At a closed briefing last week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Deputy CIA Director Michael J. Morell to rate Pakistan's cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations, on a scale of 1 to 10, the report said.
"Three," Morell replied, according to officials familiar with the exchange.
The bin Laden raid and more recent attacks by militants in Pakistan have been blows to the country's military, a revered institution in the country, noted the report, adding that some officials and outside experts said the military is mired in its worst crisis of confidence in decades.
Over the past several weeks the Pakistani military has been distancing itself from American intelligence and counterterrorism operations against militant groups in Pakistan. This has angered many in Washington who believe that bin Laden's death has shaken Al Qaeda, and that there is now an opportunity to further weaken the terrorist organisation with more raids and armed drone strikes. ANI
