Article content continued

Hersh claimed that, contrary to the US government’s version of events, bin Laden was being held prisoner by the Pakistani intelligence agency – the ISI – in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

The White House and CIA have always maintained that their own intelligence agents pieced together the information that led to the Navy Seals raid on the bin Laden compound.

However, Hersh claimed that an unnamed senior officer in the Pakistani army had been the “walk-in” who provided details of the secret hideout in exchange for a substantial amount of a $25 million bounty.

According to Hersh’s account, the supergrass was supposed to also have been rewarded with U.S. citizenship and to be alive and well in America. In a bizarre twist, the unnamed officer has now been identified in Pakistani media – citing military sources – as Brigadier Khalid.

However, his family believe he has been wrongly implicated because of his outspoken views on Pakistani politics.

The retired brigadier claimed political asylum in Britain after resigning from a 25-year career in the army in protest at the execution in 1979 of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister and father of Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007.

Brigadier Khalid died last year of cancer at the age of 79.

His 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 was an honourable and patriotic man. 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.

“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.”