California-based explorer Bill Warren has announced that he will try to find the body of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with the help of a side-scan sonar.
Warren, who worked for decades as a concert singer in churches and on cruise ships and who once took acting lessons with Arnold Schwarzenegger, now runs a diving company and has been exploring shipwrecks since the 1970s.
A motivated Warren said that he hoped to begin his search in the North Arabian Sea, and added that he found it very suspicious that photographs of Bin Laden’s burial were never released:
"Since I have expertise in finding things at sea, I thought it would be a good chance to be able to try to find him and prove whether or not my government was telling the truth, because half the world – I believe and from what I’ve read – doesn’t believe it. One of the reasons I did it is because I’m a patriotic American. I wanted to just prove the point that he’s either dead or not, if indeed we can find him," The Telegraph quoted him, as saying.
The side-scan sonar uses radio waves to detect the shapes of objects as far as 9,000 feet down on the sea floor.
In an interview with Philip Friedman Outdoors Radio, Warren said he has narrowed down the region of interest to a 50-square mile area about 50 miles offshore.
Working off a tip from some marines, he expects he’ll find the body in just two or three days.
Warren is seeking up to a million dollars from investors to launch the search.
He said he’s heard from bin Laden’s family, who has offered him money, too.
Just this week, he told Discovery News that he had signed a contract with a major production company in Los Angeles, with an eye on a documentary and TV series.