Osama a Gunner?

I think we owe it to the "war against terrorism" to take seriously the allegations about Osama bin Laden being an Arsenal fan. The source is Adam Robinson, in a not otherwise overtly funny or satirical new biography of bin Laden, entitled Behind the Mask of Terror, and the story is as follows: that, during the early 1990s, when he was living in London, the man who was later to become the world's most wanted terrorist attended matches at Highbury, in particular during the victorious European Cup-Winners' Cup campaign of the 1993-94 season.

It is further alleged that bin Laden visited the Arsenal club shop and bought a replica shirt for one of his sons. Whether, that night in the club shop, bin Laden also bought a Nigel Winterburn duvet cover and some Arsenal shower gel is not recorded. The crucial assertion is this: that Osama is a Gunner.

Of course, the first half of the Nineties was not a golden era for Arsenal, who were then grinding out their last days under George Graham, a period of strange, almost wilful stagnation for the club during which a significant number of fans came to feel deeply frustrated. It's the sort of situation which, obviously, gets to supporters in different ways. Some don't renew their season tickets; others, such as bin Laden, disappear off to caves and begin plotting to destroy America.

Does the Gunner story stand up? Conspiracy theories flourish in times of war. Some I have spoken to darkly suspect the hand of aggrieved residents of Ashburton Grove, opposed to the development there of Arsenal's new stadium.

The argument goes that, with crucial planning meetings imminent, this is no bad time to be highlighting some of the less desirable aspects of having a Premier League club on your doorstep, such as litter and Osama bin Laden. It's a compelling theory, but not one that holds water. Resistance to the stadium is organised, but does not have the resources to infiltrate an important new biography.

Elsewhere, the news of bin Laden's affiliation has been more openly accepted. The estimable, supporter-run Arsenal website, Arseweb, instantly installed the al-Qa'eda leader in its on-line list of "Celebrity Gunners", where he joins Fidel Castro, Robert Maxwell, "Mad" Frankie Fraser and the Queen Mother.

Editorially, meanwhile, the site sought to reassure the home constituency as follows: "You may shudder at the thought of having rubbed shoulders with the man back then, but Arseweb would like to believe that this makes north London ever so slightly less likely to become a target."

Good point - and worth conveying to the residents of Ashburton Grove. Conversely, the news of bin Laden's allegiance is none too comforting a thought if you happen to be living in Tottenham. One thinks again of the inhabitants of the Welsh village of Tal-y-ban, who, when the American bombing campaign began, had more reason than most to be nervous.

From Arsenal, the official response was predictable: the club moved swiftly to ban bin Laden. "Clearly he wouldn't be welcome at Highbury in the future," a club spokesman said. One understands the decision, on emotional grounds as well as in terms of public relations. At the same time, I wonder whether Arsenal aren't guilty of a failure to think through the broader issue affecting us all here. Unless I'm misreading President Bush and the campaign in Afghanistan, this is not the time to be banning bin Laden from places; it's the time to be enticing him out into the open, where he can be arrested. Right now the world wants bin Laden where it can see him: if that's row 12, seat 43 in the Clock End, then so be it.

What's disappointing is the way the significance of the extremist's Arsenal connection is being ignored completely by the military establishment. It hasn't figured in any of the US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's media briefings, and nor has General Tommy Franks, in charge of the American ground operation to capture bin Laden, mentioned Arsenal once.

Unless, that is, America is working with the information undercover. I can exclusively reveal that someone purporting to be a journalist from an Italian newspaper contacted the author and Arsenal loyalist Nick Hornby this week to ask him if he had been at the Cup-Winners' Cup quarter-final between Arsenal and Torino on March 15, 1994. Hornby was able to say that, indeed, he had been there - but that he couldn't remember anything about a bloke with a long, black beard. The conversation ended.

Was that really a reporter from Italy? Or was it the CIA, covertly following up all available leads? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, football could take us to bin Laden in a way that nobody seems to be emphasising. All week, on the television news and in the papers, foreign correspondents have been picking through the pieces of paper found on the floors of al Qa'eda safe houses in Kabul and trying to work out whether they were discarded plans for a weapon of mass destruction or simply the manual for an Afghan washing machine. But was any of them keeping an eye out for programmes from the 93-94 season and back numbers of Four Four Two magazine? I doubt it. And yet we now know these items would provide unignorable indications that the trail was hot.

What we need on the ground is someone who can infiltrate bin Laden's stronghold and then talk to him in the universal language of football. It's a role for British forces if ever there was one. The fact is that bin Laden has spent one of the most extraordinary periods in Arsenal's history sitting in a hole in some rocks, and I think it shows. Last weekend, he told his most recent interviewer: "I love death as you love life. This is what you will never understand." That's very much the George Graham-era Arsenal speaking there.

But extraordinary things have happened in the six years since the world's most wanted man last saw his side. Graham has managed Tottenham. David Seaman has grown a pony-tail. Ray Parlour has played for England. And Tony Adams has become a teetotal pianist.

Were all this communicated to bin Laden, he'd probably suspect a wind-up.

But then, properly briefed, an infiltrator could remind him what Highbury is like for a night game, with the lights and the noise and the smell of fried food and smoke on the cold air, and tempt him to get involved again. It's possible that a football fan could produce what a bunker buster has yet to: the emergence into the light of bin Laden. And then he could be shipped to America and put in prison for ever.

In the meantime, any aspiring bounty hunter could do worse than try to smoke the bastard out with the offer of "two together" for Arsenal against Deportivo in the Champions League. I know where a couple of tickets can be found and for a share of the $25 million bounty offered by the American government for the capture of bin Laden, I might just be persuaded to lead somebody to them.