An undated file picture of Osama Bin Laden. PHOTO | AFP
What you need to know:
Dar es Salaam. A Tanzanian man, Jabaldin Hamis Ijengo, has come forward alleging he played a key role in locating Osama Bin Laden.
Mr Ijengo says he provided crucial information to the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam in 2005 about Bin Laden's whereabouts in Pakistan.
The informant is now threatening to sue the US Embassy for failure to reward him for his instrumental role in disclosing the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden, ultimately leading to his death.
The US Embassy in Dar es Salaam, through its spokesperson, Kalisha Holmes, declined to comment on the matter.
“While we cannot comment on ongoing law enforcement cases, all information provided to the Rewards for Justice programme is reviewed and vetted by the relevant authorities in the US,” Ms Holmes wrote in an email.
In a letter that The Citizen has seen, addressed to the US Embassy, Mr Ijengo recounts his pivotal contribution to the capture of the Al Qaeda leader.
The informant, who also spoke to The Citizen for the first time, says he has decided to come out publicly to claim his reward because he felt he was being denied what is truly his.
“It is because of the lengthy delays that it has become inevitable for me to come out,” said Mr Ijengo.
He reminded officials of the public offer made by the embassy in response to the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, wherein a reward of $27 million was promised for information leading to Bin Laden's location.
Mr Ijengo asserts that he played his part in the bargain by providing crucial information to embassy officials in October 2005, detailing Bin Laden's whereabouts in Pakistan.
“Relying on that assurance, in October 2005, I provided crucial information to the USA Embassy in Tanzania regarding the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The said information was received by the USA Embassy special agent, Ms Brunn Anne,” reads the letter.
The information he delivered then, he claims, directly contributed to locating and eventually killing Bin Laden in May 2011.
Expressing disappointment at the embassy's failure to fulfill their commitment, Mr Ijengo emphasises the breach of contract and personal injury caused by the unmet promises.
He highlights his good faith efforts and the risks he undertook to assist in the capture, expecting the promised reward to be honoured.
“I acted in good faith, risking my safety to assist in the apprehension of the terrorist, with the expectation that the promised reward would be honoured,” he wrote.
Demanding immediate payment of the $27 million reward, Mr Ijengo specifies his NMB Bank account for the transfer and has set a 21-day deadline for the transaction.
This is not the first time the informant has contacted the US Embassy seeking compensation. In January 2015, acting through an intermediary, he made attempts, but his efforts were futile.
According to the IRC website, the US originally claimed that Bin Laden was located in 2011 using electronic intelligence.
But the website, www.internationalrewardcentre.com, disputes this and asserts that the work was accomplished thanks to an unnamed informant who walked into the US Embassy in Dar and revealed that the world's most wanted terrorist at the time was holed up in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The IRC did not state clearly how the informant came to know about bin Laden's whereabouts but insisted that, based on the evidence produced, the source was valuable and had connections with insiders within al-Qaeda operations.
IRC, a New Zealand-based company acting on the informant's behalf, had electronic documents showing that an informant supplied the US embassy in Dar with information.
The informant is also reported to have supplied the US State Department with the names of terrorist cell leaders in Tanzania, including their modus operandi and a brief on AI-Qaeda.
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