WASHINGTON, Feb 18: After all these years, where is Osama bin Laden? Two geography professors think they know.

Professors Thomas Gillespie and John Agnew of the University of California at Los Angeles use satellite-imagery analysis and elaborate geographic methods to theorise that Osama is in one of three walled compounds in the city of Parachinar.

“We believe that our work involves the first scientific approach to establishing his current location. The methods are repeatable and can be updated with new information obtained from the US intelligence community,” the professors wrote in the MIT International Review.

Prof Gillespie and Prof Agnew used the Al Qaeda chief’s last reported whereabouts, the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, and employed “theories that predict how plants and animals distribute themselves over space and over time”.

They deduced that Parachinar fit as a likely refuge -- a place where the Al Qaeda leader could have electricity, physical protection, personal privacy and a small number of bodyguards, while remaining protected from aerial view. Residing near or in a large city should reduce the risk of his being found in a military raid, they said. The risk would be higher in a small town or an isolated structure, they said.

“Parachinar has a long history of housing mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, so it most likely contains a large number of Taliban soldiers who cross over from here into Afghanistan,” they wrote.

They said they did not believe Osama was holed up in a cave. “A cave would have to have a sealed entrance, be heated and ventilated, and have supplies transported to the cave monthly or annually. We feel that most of these requirements would have physical manifestation that might easily be seen from space, and that the cave hypothesis is unlikely but could be tested,” they said. —Reuters