The family of a London pensioner accused of helping the CIA kill Osama Bin Laden are living in fear of reprisals by Al Qaeda sympathisers.
Retired Pakistani Brigadier Usman Khalid, who lived in Hayes, west London for 35 years until his death from cancer in 2014, has been named in the Pakistani media as the “supergrass” who leaked the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted terrorist to the Americans.
The former officer’s family have strongly denied the claims saying he left Pakistan in 1979 and would not have known that Bin Laden was hiding in the city of Abbottabad where Navy Seals eventually tracked him down in 2011.
His son, Abid Khalid told the Standard he was going to the police today because he feared for his life.
He said: “I am fearing for my life and my family’s lives after this story which is total rubbish.
“They (Al Qaeda sympathisers) could target me. There is no truth in the claims. My father had cancer. How could he possibly have orchestrated Bin Laden’s end?
“If he had do you think he would have ended his life in a small house in Hayes where everyone knew who he was? He would have been put in a safe house. He is an innocent man in all this. He had no contact with the CIA and knew nothing about Bin Laden except what was in the news.”
Mr Khalid said there was no truth to claims his father had received the $25million (£16million) reward. He died aged 79 living in a modest £350,000 semi-detatched home.
He added: “The whole story fails the truth test. My father simply cannot have been the man who informed on Bin Laden. This story has put in jeopardy those I love. Britain is relatively safe but there are still crazy people out there who might target us after this.”
Senior Pakistani military officers have also rejected the claims saying Mr Khalid was never a member of the ISI intelligence agency suspected of harbouring Bin Laden.
The retired brigadier claimed political asylum in Britain after resigning from a 25 year career in the army in protest at the execution in 1979 of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister and father of Benazir Bhutto.
He set up the London Institute of South Asia which campaigned for human rights in the subcontinent and had campaigned for peace in Kashmir.
