Newsweek claims intel based on authoritative sources

Egyptian-born al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, is most likely hiding in Karachi under the protection of Pakistan’s notorious spy agency ISI, a U.S. media report said.

“Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency has been protecting al-Zawahiri, a trained surgeon, since U.S. forces evicted al-Qaeda from Afghanistan in late 2001,” Newsweek said in a major investigative story, claiming that its information was based on several authoritative sources.

“His most likely location today, they say: Karachi, the teeming port city of 26 million people on the Arabian Sea,” the weekly said.

This is for the first time in several years a news report has surfaced about the hiding location of the al-Qaeda chief, who is Osama bin Laden’s mentor and successor.

“Like everything about his location, there’s no positive proof,” Bruce Riedel, a 30-year CIA veteran, who was the top adviser on South Asia and the West Asia for the past four U.S. presidents, told the magazine.

‘Logical hideout’

“There are pretty good indications, including some of the material found in Abbottabad [in Pakistan],” where [Osama] bin Laden was slain, “that point in that direction,” he added.

“This would be a logical place to hide out, where he would feel pretty comfortable that the Americans can’t come and get him,” Mr. Riedel said.

Mr. Riedel told the weekly that Karachi would be a “very hard” place for the U.S. to conduct the kind of commando raid that got bin Laden on May 2, 2011.