Osama dumped 320 km off Indian coast: US treasure hunter

PTI

London, 04 May 2012: American treasure hunter Bill Warren has claimed to have located Osama bin Laden’s body bag deep under the Arabian Sea, 320 kilometres west of Surat in Gujarat, and hopes to start his mission on June 1.

 

"I’ve located where they threw him away," Daily Mail quoted him as telling Spanish newspaper El Mundo. "I’m the only one with this information."

 

With the help of recent photos released by the US Navy showing the Laden’s final resting place, Warren claims to have pinpointed the location of the body bag, and now wants USD 200,000 to recover it from the sea.

 

"We do this because we are patriotic Americans and feel that President Barack Obama failed to provide the proof," he said.

 

The search would probably "last a week" to three months, he said, adding, he wanted to start the mission on June 1.

 

Bin Laden, 54, was shot dead in his pajamas during a US Navy SEAL raid on his hideout in Pakistan’s garrison city of Abbottabad on May 2 last year. He was given a ’sea burial’ to prevent his legions of followers building a mausoleum on his grave.

 

From his experience of "locating more than 200 shipwrecks around the world during his long career", he has no doubt that the cadaver hasn’t moved from where it was dropped because it’s in a weighted bag, the daily said.

 

The treasure hunter, who claims he doesn’t believe the official story that the terror mastermind was buried at sea, started hunting for the body last June.

 

Warren said he was working his contacts in Azerbaijan, where he was trying to locate some old ships, to rent Russian deep diving equipment for his bin Laden assignment.

 

He was also aware of the perils of his mission because the US government could kill him or sink his boat, the report said.

 

But he said he wouldn’t raise bin Laden’s body to the surface.

 

Instead, he would take a few photographs, videotape the entire "experience" and take a chunk of flesh for DNA tests.