Doctor claims bin Laden healthy

? A prominent Pakistani doctor who admitted treating Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders before and after Sept. 11 said Wednesday that the terrorist mastermind was in excellent health and showed no signs of kidney failure.

Dr. Amer Aziz, recently released after being held incommunicado and interrogated for a month by FBI and CIA agents, told The Associated Press he knew nothing of al-Qaida’s plans. He rejected allegations he helped the organization in its efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

Speaking at his clinic in Lahore, Aziz said he met bin Laden twice — in 1999 after the al-Qaida leader hurt his back falling off a horse in southern Afghanistan, and in November 2001, two months after the terrorist attacks, when Aziz was summoned to treat another senior al-Qaida leader, Mohammed Atef, in Kabul.

Bin Laden was in strong health on both occasions, said Aziz, a British-educated orthopedic surgeon. He said he saw no evidence that the al-Qaida leader had kidney disease, as has been widely reported, or that he was on dialysis.

“He was walking. He was healthy. He just told me to give good treatment to his man (Atef), that he was a very important man,” Aziz said of the November meeting, in which al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also was present.

“If you are on dialysis, you have a special look. I didn’t see any of that,” Aziz said, adding that he also gave bin Laden a complete physical in 1999 and found no signs of kidney problems.

Reports of bin Laden’s poor health ” and his deteriorating appearance in videotapes released shortly after U.S. bombing began in Afghanistan in October 2001 ” fueled speculation that he might have died. Intelligence officials now say an audiotape released last month was recorded recently and was the voice of the al-Qaida leader.

Aziz said that when he went to Afghanistan last November to set up a surgical unit at the University of Jalalabad, near the border with Pakistan, he had no idea that he was going to meet bin Laden.

“I was stunned,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is the most wanted man in the world.’ But he seemed so calm.”

A day after he treated Atef for a slipped disk, the al-Qaida military chief was killed by U.S. bombing, Aziz said, adding that he attended Atef’s funeral.

Aziz, who speaks fluent English, said it never occurred to him to turn in bin Laden.

“Anyone who is fighting for what is right, it is my duty to treat them,” he said.

Aziz said his American interrogators grilled him on bin Laden’s health, asked him for the names of those he treated, and accused him of helping al-Qaida obtain weapons of mass destruction.

In the end, Aziz said, the agents let him go because there was no evidence against him. He said that before his Nov. 19 release, the agents each apologized to him for putting him through the ordeal.