Is Osama bin Laden Dead?

If true one can only hope it was excruciating.

Osama bin Laden, charismatic founder of al-Qaeda, died of typhoid earlier this month in Pakistan, according to a highly classified intelligence brief given to the King of Saudi Arabia and President Chirac this week, and leaked to the French newspaper L'Est Republicain.

The chief of the terror group was known to have been suffering from acute typhoid and seeking treatment in Pakistan in mid-August. This was picked up and tracked by Saudi intelligence services. The same sources, said by the French to be very reliable, believe he later died.

The powerful Pakistani intelligence agency the ISI - at times virtually a parallel government, instrumental among other things in founding the Taliban - has not confirmed the report. "We have no information on Osama's death," a senior Pakistan Interior Ministry official said on Saturday morning.