Instead, however, about $1m (£680,000) of CIA cash was siphoned off for a purpose to which Washington would never have agreed: as part of a $5m ransom for an Afghan diplomat captured by al-Qaeda.
The only obstacle to the deal was Osama bin Laden himself, who at first questioned the wisdom of accepting the cash as he feared a trap, according to The New York Times.
He thought the money might be laced with radiation, tainted with poison or fitted with a tracking device that would enable the US to discover the location of senior al-Qaeda leaders.
Details of the payment emerged in letters found in a raid the following year by US Navy Seals who killed Bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the newspaper reported. They were submitted as evidence in the trial of Abid Naseer, who was convicted this month in New York of supporting terrorism and plots to bomb a shopping centre in Manchester and the New York subway.
The kidnapped diplomat, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, the Afghan consul general in Peshawar, Pakistan, was seized in 2008 and handed over to al-Qaeda. He was released two years later after Bin Laden finally approved the arrangement.
http://report24.co.uk/article/124259/1m-of-cia-cash-siphoned-off-from-secret-afghan-fund-to-pay-al-qaeda-ransom-demand
