A member of Tajik President Emomali Rahmon’s (pictured) government told the US in 2009 that Pakistan knew bin Laden’s location.

Source: Central Asia Newswire

A Tajik diplomat warned the United States in 2009 that Pakistan was shielding Osama bin Laden and likely knew his exact location, U.S. government documents released this week by WikiLeaks noted.

A senior Tajik counter-terror official, Abdullo Sadulloevich Nazarov, tipped off U.S. diplomatic staff less than two years ago.

“In Pakistan, Osama bin Laden wasn’t an invisible man, and many knew his whereabouts in North Waziristan, but whenever security forces attempted a raid on his hideouts, the enemy received warning of their approach from sources in the security forces,” Nazarov said in a diplomatic cable dated December 16, 2009.

U.S. security forces had been tracking down bin Laden for nearly 10 years before they were able to execute the global terror leader over the weekend in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, just 74 miles from the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

Pakistan on Wednesday rebuffed criticism and denied complicity in hiding bin Laden from international allies.

“We have intelligence failure of the rest of the world including the United States,” the BBC news agency reported Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani as saying