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Bounties a Bust in Hunt for Al-Qaeda
Jaber Elbaneh, a U.S.-Yemeni citizen with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, walks into court in Sanaa, Yemen, where officials have refused to arrest or extradite him.
(By Craig Whitlock -- The Washington Post)
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The State Department has declined to boost the reward for bin Laden, arguing that more money was unlikely to do any good and would only add to his notoriety.
Kirk, the Illinois congressman, said Rewards for Justice should offer something besides dollars. Huge cash rewards are an abstract concept, he said, for many people living in the impoverished tribal regions of northwestern Pakistan where bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders are believed to have taken refuge.
He said those likely to blow the whistle are young Pakistani men living near the Afghan border who have been mistreated by foreign al-Qaeda fighters. For them, the most attractive reward is likely to be something simple.
"One of the best things that could happen to them would be to get their hands on a motorcycle," he said.
Arthur Keller, a former CIA case officer who was posted in Pakistan in 2006, said the rewards program was hobbled by other factors.
"They'd love to have a $25 million bounty, and they aren't supportive of Osama," Keller added. "But they don't necessarily trust the U.S. Who do you report it to? The local police chief? . . . They're not sure who to turn to or who to trust."
Keller said brutal attempts at intimidation by al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathizers were widespread in Pakistan's tribal areas. Opponents were often silenced simply by branding them as spies for the U.S. or Pakistani governments, regardless of whether the accusation was true.
"Just about every week, somewhere in the tribal areas, a body was found in the road with a note pinned to it saying, 'American spy,' " Keller said.
Presidential Protection
In other places, the whereabouts of wanted terrorists are well known. But the State Department has had trouble persuading allied governments to act.
Three suspected al-Qaeda operatives sought under the Rewards for Justice program are in Yemen, each with a bounty of as much as $5 million on his head.
Two -- Jamal al-Badawi and Fahd al-Quso-- were convicted in Yemeni courts of helping to organize the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors and wounded 39. The Yemeni government has refused to hand them over to the United States, citing the lack of an extradition treaty.
The third is Elbaneh, a U.S.-Yemeni citizen and accused member of the so-called Lackawanna Six, a group of young men from Buffalo who traveled to Afghanistan in the spring of 2001 to train in al-Qaeda camps.
