Bin Laden fled to Iran, cook says

In mid-November, as US airstrikes were intensifying on Taliban frontline positions, bin Laden was still in Jalalabad, Akram says. "Three days before we left Jalalabad for Tora Bora, bin Laden and his top aides met Pashtun tribal leaders, many of them from Pakistan," Akram says. "The meeting was on Osama's invitation. I was out at the gate when the tribal chiefs arrived, and the sheikh [bin Laden] gave them money."

"On the third night, we all left the city and traveled to Tora Bora. I was in the third to last car, and there was a storm of dust in front of us. All of the important leaders were in that convoy, including bin Laden and the Egyptian doctor, [Ayman] Al Zawahiri."

"The plan had been to defend Tora Bora to our deaths. We had thousands of men there. The sheikh himself divided us into the caves and said, 'This is your position, and that is your's.' Then he went to his own big cave. He spoke on satellite phone to his friends in the first few days."

Sometime near the end of November or the beginning of December, Akram says he was cooking in his cave when a huge bomb exploded at the base and blew him some 30 feet back into the cave. Two of his comrades were killed in the blast. After that, he says, he decided to flee with two other survivors.

"Osama had three offers of escape," he says. "One from Iraq, one from Iran, and another from some mafia types.... We received a lot of Iranian currency, and the commanders distributed it to the soldiers," he says, adding that he received 700,000 rials ($1,400) for his own personal use."

The Saudi chef says he believes that bin Laden planned to go through Iran and then eventually end up in Azerbaijan or possibly Chechnya.

A State Department official, contacted yesterday, says: "I haven't seen any evidence that [Osama bin Laden] is in Iran. I can't corroborate that."

Akram says bin Laden left about the same time he did, and that several other Al Qaeda leaders said they were heading to Iran.

"Our own Chechens were killing people who tried to leave, so we left at night and traveled into Paktia near to Gardez and onto Zarmat," he says. "Everybody said it was best to head to Iran, but I was not very keen on the idea.

"I got into an argument here around Ghazni," he says. "My comrades wanted to go to Iran, but I was in favor of hiding here. One day when I was praying, they drove off in the pickup truck and left me behind."

Last week, Akram was picked up near the main highway, walking in the direction of Kandahar. He was holding a short Kalashnikov, but did not resist his heavily armed Hazara captors.

"I may be a criminal, but I'm also a human being, and I have rights," he says, waving his hands and moving closer to an interpreter so he could whisper. "I say kill me or cut my legs off, but don't tie me up every night and beat me. I'm ready to go to Cuba, or wherever."

Akram, unlike many Al Qaeda captives who stick to the network's code of silence, blasts bin Laden for betraying the cause of the "jihad," or holy war. He also expresses remorse at what he had been doing, insisting that he was misled from the beginning.

"I have visited a lot of countries, including Egypt," Akram says. "I wanted to study there.... But when I got to school, some bad types misled me and said go for the jihad."

He goes on to criticize bin Laden - although he mentions that bin Laden once sent him to Detroit, Mich., for medical treatment - and expresses hope that the US will do better by Afghanistan than bin Laden did. "One mistake that Osama made is that he only bought pickup trucks for the Taliban, and provided some rupees for their front lines. He was never seriously interested in the welfare of the Afghan people. Now that Al Qaeda is gone, the US should help the Afghans, the poor have suffered too much."

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