Pak spy agency, Osama were in regular contact: Stratfor

London, Feb.28 (ANI): Private American security company Stratfor has revealed that former Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was in routine contact with several senior figures of Pakistan's military intelligence agency while in hiding in Pakistan.

The disclosure has surfaced in emails published by the whistle-blowing WikiLeaks website.

WikiLeaks obtained it from the Anonymous hacking group.

Stratfor provides analysis of world affairs to major corporations, military officials and government agencies and was once likened by an American business magazine to a "shadow CIA".

A Daily Telegraph report said that according to one of the emails, the company was shown the information papers collected from bin Laden's Abbotabad compound after the US special forces attack last May that resulted in his death.

The e-mail, from a Stratfor analyst, suggested that up to 12 officials in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency knew of the al-Qaeda leader's safe house.

The internal email did not name the Pakistani officials involved but said the US could use the information as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Islamabad after the raid.

American officials have always believed it was impossible for the ISI not to have known that Bin Laden was sheltering in a garrison town so close to Islamabad. Pakistan has repeatedly dismissed the charge.

ikiLeaks claimed to have five million Stratfor emails that it would publish in collaboration with media outlets. Only 200 were released in the first lot. (ANI)