April 29, 2010 - 6:14AM

AFP

Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden has sought and wanted to use nuclear
arms, former bodyguard Nasser al-Bahri said in an interview with an Arab
daily published on Wednesday.

"Sheikh Osama used to dream of possessing nuclear weapons, and I am sure
that if he were to get his hands on a nuclear weapon, he would not have
hesitated to use it," the Yemeni guard told the London-based Al-Quds
Al-Arabi.

The United States warned earlier this month that al-Qaeda's interest in
nuclear weapons was still strong and said the risk of nuclear terrorism
was serious.

"Al-Qaeda has been engaged in the effort to acquire a nuclear weapon for
over 15 years, and its interest remains strong today," said John
Brennan, President Barack Obama's top anti-terrorism and Homeland
Security adviser.

But Brennan said he had "no indication that al-Qaeda has a nuclear
weapons capability."

Bahri, who now lives in Yemen with two wives and five children, said he
was "proud to have worked as a guard for a great personality," saying he
was instructed to kill Bin Laden if that was the only way to avoid his
capture.

Bin Laden has a $US50 million ($A54.63 million) US bounty on his head.

"If we were not able to protect Sheikh Osama bin Laden as his personal
guards, we were supposed... to eliminate him... It was better he be
taken dead rather than alive," he said.

"That would be a massive defeat for al-Qaeda, jihadist groups and
Muslims in general," he added.

But the former guard, who left al-Qaeda and Afghanistan in 2000, told
AFP earlier this month that he had co-authored a book with a French
journalist aimed at dissuading young people from joining al-Qaeda.

As a supporter of jihad, or holy war, against what he considered
"Western injustice," Bahri had joined al-Qaeda but found it "not very
convincing from the inside," he said.

Bahri served time in detention in Yemen following the October 2000
suicide bombing against the warship USS Cole in the southern port of
Aden that killed 17 American personnel.

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