Armed US 'Bin Laden hunter' is held in Pakistan

An American man who claimed to be on a mission to hunt down Osama Bin Laden has been arrested in northern Pakistan, police say. They said that Gary Brooks Faulkner, 52, was detained in the mountains of Chitral district north of Peshawar. He had a pistol, dagger and a sword and was carrying night-vision equipment as well as Christian literature.

Police say Mr Faulkner was stopped near the border with Afghanistan's Nuristan province, a known Taliban stronghold. They say he told investigators after his arrest late on Sunday that he was on a solo mission to kill Osama Bin Laden who is thought to be hiding in the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border area.



The al-Qaeda leader is the world's most-wanted man, with the US offering a reward of up to $25m (£17m) for information leading to his capture. Police say Mr Faulkner, who is from California, arrived as a tourist in Chitral on 2 June and was assigned a security escort before vanishing on Monday evening. A search was then launched and he was found in a forest a few miles from the Afghan border.

"We have interrogated him and he has told us that he was on his way to Afghanistan to capture and kill Bin Laden," Mumtaz Ahmed, a senior police official in Chitral said. Asked if he felt he had a chance of tracing Bin Laden, he told police, "God is with me, and I am confident I will be successful in killing him," Mr Faulkner said.