It’s a question that US Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently admitted he could not answer, throwing the justification for the ongoing war in Afghanistan into further doubt.

With no solid intelligence on the United States’ public enemy number one for some years, rumours about Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts – and whether he is even still alive, have been circulating for just as long.

Did the man said to be behind the attacks on New York’s Twin Towers die shortly after the 9/11 attacks due to renal illness? Have US intelligence agencies faked tapes purportedly from Bin Laden? If he is alive, is he in Pakistan, Afghanistan or somewhere else entirely? It’s the stuff of conspiracy theorists’ dreams.

Abdul Barri Atwan, editor in chief of London-based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide that he firmly believes Bin Laden is alive and kicking.

Listen to the Newsline interview with Abdul Barri Atwan

“In Islam, if Osama Bin Laden died, his organisation is obliged to inform his family for heritage reasons and also because Sharia law [expects as much] so that his wives can marry again. I believe he hasn’t died.”

Mr Atwan cited examples of other Islamist extremist leaders whose deaths have been reported in accordance with Sharia law.

In the 2001 bombings of Kabul, Abu Hafs Al Masri, an alleged military chief of al-Qaeda was killed and his family was notified. The wife of Ayman al-Zawahiri, another key al-Qaeda figure, was also killed in US bombings in Afghanistan following 9/11 and, says Mr Atwan, her family was also notified of her death.

Doubts over tapes
Mr Atwan also refers the numerous tapes and audio recordings that have surfaced over the years as being reason to believe that Bin Laden is still alive, despite some doubts over their authenticity.

If he is alive, as most intelligence agencies seem to believe, he may be being sheltered by local sympathisers. Some say he is in Pakistan’s tribal zone, others that he is in north or eastern Afghanistan, although the presence of US bases on the border make that unlikely.

Mr Atwan is unconvinced and thinks that he may be somewhere else entirely.

“I believe the Americans could be looking for him in the wrong places…for the last eight years they have been gathering information but there has been no trace of his hiding places. My feeling is that he could be outside Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Tora Bora mountains
Mr Atwan interviewed Bin Laden in November 1996 and suggested that he would soon be expelled from Afghanistan, as he had been from Sudan in May of the same year.

“He said ‘yes, I think I will go to Yemen because the mountains of Yemen will be more protective and more kind to me - they are exactly like the Tora Bora mountains [in eastern Afghanistan]’. So it seems he was thinking about leaving the whole area. Maybe he isn’t in Yemen, but he is definitely somewhere he is not expected to be.”

Wherever he is, the question will be asked again in another few months, and until there is, if ever, a definitive answer, the FBI’s most wanted fugitive will continue to dominant headlines, the most elusive figure of the war on terror.