Taliban Naturalises Bin Laden As Citizen Of Islamic Emirate Of Afghanistan

The Taliban leaders have granted citizenship to Osama bin Laden and four other leaders of the Arab terrorists, reports the Pakistani News Service with reference to unidentified sources in Kandahar. "Now Sheih Osama is no longer our guest but a citizen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and his extradition is out of the question," one of the Taliban fighters told the PNS. The latter did not specify whether bin Laden applied for Afghan citizenship or was granted it on the initiative of the Taliban leadership. Other four newly-fledged Afghan citizens are former Egyptian citizens Aiman al-Zawahiri and Sheih Asim Abd ur-Rahman, the ringleaders of the Islamic Jihad grouping banned in Egypt, as well as Al-Qaeda's commander-in-chief Saif ul-Adil Abu Hafez and his deputy Mohammad Atef. They are on the list of suspects particularly wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as accomplices in the airstrikes in New York and Washington on September 11.