Abbottabad, Pakistan - Pakistani police on Wednesday arrested a builder who constructed the house where Osama bin Laden was killed early this week in the north-western city of Abbottabad, an official said.
Police were questioning Gull Madah about the three-storey building's unusual fortifications, which included six-metre walls topped with barbed wire.
“We are trying to determine whether the compound was built especially as a hideout of al-Qaeda or if al-Qaeda rented the house randomly,” a local police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The house, located barely 100 metres from a military academy, is owned by a resident of the north-west province of Khyber-Pahktunkhwa called Arshad Khan, according to initial investigations.
“We are looking also for Arshad Khan but he is still at large,” the official said. Khan commissioned the building from Madah in 2005.
The house has been in the limelight since Monday when dozens of US special forces troops stormed it and killed al-Qaeda chief bin Laden. They also took into custody his two wives and several of his children.
Pakistani law enforcement agencies have sealed the house, and the press were only allowed to view it from the outside for one hour on Tuesday. Journalists are now being kept two kilometres away from the compound.
The proximity of Osama's compound to the Kakol Military Academy has raised suspicions about links between al-Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence agencies.
Leon Panetta, head of the US Central Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers Tuesday that Pakistan's agencies were either involved in bin Laden's hiding, or incompetent. “Neither place is a good place to be,” he said at the closed-door meeting. - Sapa-dpa