LAHORE, 28 November 2002 — A prominent Pakistani doctor said he treated Osama Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders before and after the Sept. 11 attacks, describing him as in excellent health and showing no signs of the kidney failure that he is widely reported to suffer from.
Dr. Amir Aziz, who was recently released after being held incommunicado and interrogated for a month by FBI and CIA agents, told his story in an interview yesterday with The Associated Press from his clinic in Lahore.
He said he knew nothing of Al-Qaeda’s plans and rejected allegations he helped the organization in its efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
Aziz said he met Bin Laden twice — once in 1999 after the Al-Qaeda leader hurt his back falling off a horse in southern Afghanistan, and again in November 2001, just two months after the terrorist attacks, when Aziz was summoned to treat another senior Al-Qaeda leader, Mohammed Atef, in Kabul. On both occasions, Bin Laden was in excellent health, according to Aziz, a British-educated orthopedic surgeon. He said he saw no evidence that the Al-Qaeda leader suffered from a kidney ailment, as has been widely reported, or that he was on dialysis.
"When I saw him last he was in excellent health. He was walking. He was healthy. He just told me to give good treatment to his man (Atef), that he was a very important man," Aziz said of the November meeting, in which Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, was also present.
Aziz said he had gone to Afghanistan last November to set up a surgical unit at the University of Jalalabad, near the border with Pakistan, and had no idea that he was going to meet the Al-Qaeda leader. "I was stunned," he said. "I thought, ‘This is the most wanted man in the world.’ But he seemed so calm." A day after he treated Atef for a slipped disk, the Al-Qaeda military chief was killed by US bombing, Aziz said, adding that he was among those who attended Atef’s funeral.
Aziz, who speaks fluent English, said it never occurred to him to turn in Bin Laden or the Taleban. He said he had been traveling to Afghanistan since 1989 to give medical support to Islamic fighters, a time when it was "kosher for everyone to support the mujahedeen," or holy warriors. In those days, Bin Laden and his anti-Soviet fighters were supported by the United States. (AP)
