Courier who led U.S. to Osama bin Laden’s hideout identified

SHOT DEAD! Osama bin Laden

A diplomatic source told CNN that the courier who was in close contact with Osama bin Laden and who eventually led the United States to him was a Kuwaiti named Abu Ahmad.

U.S. officials have said that when the identity of the courier — who they have not named — was established in 2007 the U.S. began a path to the house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where the al Qaeda leader was living.

Analysis of assessments of detainees held at the U.S. Navy's detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, include several mentions of a man by the name of Abu Ahmad al Kuwaiti, who was reportedly close to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — also a Kuwaiti.

The information on the detainee assessments came from U.S. Defense Department documents published by WikiLeaks.

Since the operation that killed bin Laden, U.S. officials have described the courier they were tracking as a protege of Mohammed and another senior member of al Qaeda, Abu Faraj al Libi, a Libyan detainee who was named as al Qaeda's third most senior leader when he was captured in May 2005.