US to release Osama files

Washington, May 1 (IANS) The US will release documents seized from the compound of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan, a senior White House official said Monday.

John Brennan, President Barack Obama's homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser, made the announcement during a speech at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington thinktank.

Brennan said some of the documents seized at bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, May 2 last year will be published online by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center this week. The documents were never made public before, reported Xinhua.

He also gave a preview of what some of the documents will show, including that bin Laden worried about "the rise of lower leaders who are not as experienced and this would lead to the repeat of mistakes".

Brennan said the documents show Al Qaeda leaders "continue to struggle to communicate with subordinates and affiliates", and bin Laden confessed to "disaster after disaster", while urging his leaders to flee the tribal regions and go to places "away from aircraft photography and bombardment".

The documents also show bin Laden considered changing his organisation's name, as US officials "have largely stopped using the phrase 'the war on terror' in the context of not wanting to provoke Muslims". Simply calling them Al Qaeda, bin Laden said, "reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them."