U.S. Aided Search for Ocalan, Officials Admit

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials acknowledged Saturday that the United States worked for months to help Turkey arrest Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Officials confirmed the gist of reports appearing in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times saying that U.S. diplomatic pressure helped put Ocalan in flight from a haven in Syria and eventually into the arms of Turkish commandos.

“We’ve been engaged diplomatically for months to bring him to justice,” one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Ocalan, who had lived in exile since 1980, was expelled from Syria in November and then bounced from country to country in search of a haven until he took refugee at the Greek Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

Turkish commandos captured Ocalan on Monday as he was supposedly being driven to the Nairobi airport for a flight to Amsterdam. He is now being held for interrogation and trial on a Turkish island.

Members of a U.S. team of intelligence and law enforcement officers, in Nairobi investigating the bombing of the U.S. Embassy there last August, quickly discovered that Ocalan had arrived there, reports said.

They placed the Greek Embassy under surveillance and monitored his phone conversations while he placed calls to political contacts, they said.

The United States has insisted it had no “direct involvement” in Ocalan’s arrest, which has triggered massive demonstrations by Kurdish protesters throughout Europe.

Ocalan’s main lawyer, Britta Boehler, was quoted on Thursday as saying the CIA was involved in his capture.