Germany's spy agency BND helped the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in tracking down Al-Qaeda supreme leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan's garrison township of Abbottabad, where US Navy SEALS killed him, media reported on Sunday
German international radio Deutsche Welle quoted a Bild am Sonntag report as saying that BND (German intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst) told the CIA that bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan with the knowledge of Pakistani security authorities -- information it received from an informant within the country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
This knowledge was said to have confirmed CIA suspicions. The newspaper reported that the BND provided help before the operation that killed bin Laden, using its base in the Bavarian town of Bad Aibling to monitor telephone and email traffic in northern Pakistan.
Earlier, Seymour Hersh in a story published in the London Review of Books claimed that the US got to Osama bin Laden with Pakistan's help, but later disclosed the operation in a manner that made the country look like a villain.
"They helped. They totally helped. They helped a great deal," said Hersh when he was asked if he believed Pakistan helped the US reach the Al Qaeda leader.
However, Pakistan categorically denied that it knew bin Laden was living within its borders or that it had advance knowledge of the 2011 operation.
On May 2, 2011, US Navy SEALS raided a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, a garrison town in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, and killed bin Laden.
