"I met a rich man from the House of Saud, the Saudi royal family, when he was in Peshawar in Pakistan in 1988," Krekar told wire service NTB on Thursday.
"At the meeting, I asked the rich man for support for Kurdish children in Halabja," Krekar said.
He claimed there were about "six or seven" men present at the meeting, and that one of them glanced through a photo album Krekar had delivered to the rich man, without saying a word.
Krekar said that after he left, one of the men who had been in the house told him that the silent man who had looked at the photo albums was Osama bin Laden. "I never went back to them," Krekar claimed.
He added that he gave Norwegian security officials (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste, PST) an account of the meeting five years ago, when he had been brought in for questioning.
Newspaper VG carried a story Thursday that Krekar had met Osama bin Laden, which Krekar claims must have been leaked by PST. "Someone is playing with my life," said Krekar, who has been on a media offensive of late as he tries to fight charges that he and a military group he headed in northern Iraq are linked to bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Norway's white collar crime unit Oekokrim is now taking over the investigation of charges against Krekar.
Meanwhile, Krekar's defense lawyer Brynjar Meling went to court Thursday in an effort to strike down police charges that Krekar took part in private organizations of a military character.
