US diver hopes to find Osama bin Laden's remains

Jun 15, 2011, 1:13 GMT

Los Angeles - A California diver and treasure hunter hopes to find evidence of the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by scanning the Arabian Sea with sonar.

'I am serious about this, I am not joking,' Bill Warren, a 59-year-old professional diver from San Diego, told the German Press Agency dpa. 'The main motivation is to try to see if my president was really telling the truth and if bin Laden is truly dead on the bottom of the ocean.'

Bin Laden was killed in a US raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, last month and was buried at sea by the US Navy. President Barack Obama decided not to release photographs of bin Laden's body or the burial.

Warren said he has conducted dives around the world in search of sunken ships and treasure over the past 35 years. He claimed he has already found three investors to finance the search, which he estimates would cost 400,000 dollars.

Warren hopes to begin his search from India with a camera team in a month's time. A sonar instrument dragged behind the ship would be able to detect small objects at 3,000 metres below sea-level, he said.

If the search, planned to take up to eight weeks, is successful in finding bin Laden's remains, Warren said he would take photographs and DNA samples.

Even if the team does not find the body, 'we might find a treasure shipwreck with lots of valuable things,' Warren said.

The expedition would make for a 'wonderful documentary,' which he hopes to sell to television producers. 'We don't know what we would do with the body,' he said, noting that it is a 'very sensitive' issue.

With the planned expedition making headlines in the United States, Warren said he would not be surprised to hear from the White House shortly.

'I think [President Barack] Obama or one of his representatives in Washington will tell me not to' go ahead with the search, he said.

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