1.00 am - By RICHARD LLOYD-PARRY
JALALABAD - Osama bin Laden's underpants were hanging up to dry in the bathroom of his house outside Jalalabad. They were striped grey and black cotton boxer shorts, with a label reading Angelo Petrico, a size XXL - very large for such a lean looking man.
They may, it is true have belonged to one of his bodyguards, sons or advisers who lived with him in a maze-like compound 20 minutes outside the town - but I lifted them from the clothes line anyway, a single souvenir from a place full of far more sinister and deadly objects.
Since the retreat of their Taleban protectors a fortnight ago, many fascinating relics of the al Qaeda network have been discovered in their former camp and hideout: exercise books full of scribbled notes on nuclear and chemical materials, weapons manuals, and many tons of live explosives.
Apart from the offices, libraries and armouries of mortars and hand grenades, there are other roots which tell a more personal story of the private lives of the al Qaeda family. Within the high mud walls of this compound lived the other members of the bin Laden clan. Here at least one of his wives and her children, slept, washed, cooked and passed their days.
According to the men who currently guard it, anti-Taleban Mujahedin of Jalalabad's ruling council, Osama bin Laden was seen at his house a few days before the bombing campaign began on October 7, when he escorted away his wife and household.
He may even have been here on September 11, when the hijacked planes crashed into their targets, and the World Trade Center collapsed.
Unconfirmed reports from Jalalabad have had him sighted in the city as recently as 11 days ago, just 24-hours before the Taleban peacefully pulled out with all their military forces.
But the house in the place known as Ghulam Dog, 20 minutes drive from the city centre, had intermittently served as one of his bases for years. "I saw him myself so often, so what I tell you I witnessed with my own eyes," said Ahmad Shah, the Mujahedin commander whose men guard the house.
"I first saw him here before the Taleban came. His bodyguards lived here with him - they slept in the mosque at the front of the house, and he kept his family here including his wife. That is why it has so many rooms."
The compound, nicknamed "Families" is about 500 metres by 200 metres with round turrets at its corners. Inside, it is indeed a warren, a tightly packed arrangement of rooms connected by narrow alleyways.
In the outer courtyards is the characteristic jumble of most abandoned al-Qaeda premises, a mixture of the deadly, decaying and mundane. A pile of desiccated loaves of flat naan bread sits next to the cold ashes of an oven. On the other side are cases of unspent machine gun ammunition by a dust covered ping-pong table.
It was in a house like this, and in this area, that an Italian and a Spanish journalist described finding boxes containing bottles of sarin nerve gas, the day before they were ambushed and executed on the road to Kabul. If the gas was indeed here, then it had been moved before my visit yesterday - but through another set of doors, in the inner compound, a menacing jungle of hardware remains.
Through another low door, and down an alley littered with antique 7 inch floppy discs, is a small room covered with books and ironware. There are printed circuit boards with their blobs of shiny solder; a pile of tubes for photographic film, all empty; screws and hooks; and dozens of books, most of them in English.
"Operator's manual for: detonating mine, portable, metallic and non-metallic" reads one title, close to books on logarithms and calculus. There is a sales catalogue of electronic switches published by the Japan Aviation Electronics Industry, and among all this an empty box which once contained a kit for building a toy lorry.
The only photographs I have seen of Osama bin Laden's children show them posing with Kalashnikovs, and it is unexpected to find evidence of authentic childishness.
In the centre of Jalalabad four days ago I visited another house where two senior al Qaeda commanders lived. Inside were telephone directory-sized books written in Arabic and describing, with painstaking diagrams, the operation of every kind of infantry weapon.
But far more interesting was the conversation I had with a little Afghan boy named Ashok, who was playing in the street outside. He described the five al Qaeda children who lived in the house opposite his - how they were never allowed out, and how they were scolded if they so much as looked out of the window. "If they went outside the door, they were punished by their father," he said, "and nobody was allowed to talk to the adults, not even a kid. I wanted to talk to the children, but they didn't speak our language, and they had furious faces."
Back in the bin Laden house, many of the rooms are completely bare, but on the far side are what were clearly the women's quarters. There are materials for cooking here - a flat pan for bread and jars of spices and herbs. Here too are objects which I have found in every one of half a dozen terrorist bases or houses in Jalalabad - empty tins of Hedge brand tomato paste and packets of macaroni. Osama bin Laden's Arabs it seems, had a passion for pasta.
There is an unused hypodermic needle on the floor and a selection of pills and medicine bottles.
But now the Mujahedin guards are hurrying us out, and time is running out. I nip in to the last room, and there they are where they must have been hanging for the last fortnight - baggy, sagging a little in the elastic, but undeniably a collectors' item. Many before me have seen his guns, his plans, and his weaponry but how many people can claim to own the underwear of the world's most wanted man?
- INDEPENDENT
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Bin Laden leaves underwear and macaroni behind
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