Washington, May 3 (IANS) The courier who led the US to the Abbottabad mansion of Al Qaeda's elusive leader Osama bin Laden has been identified as a Kuwaiti, a media report said.

 
 CNN quoted a diplomatic source as saying that the man was Abu Ahmad. His identity was established way back in 2007 when the US intensified efforts to track down bin Laden.
 
 In July last year, Pakistanis working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drove up behind a white Suzuki near Peshawar, driven by Ahmad, the New York Times reported.
 
 The car's licence plate number was noted.
 
 After weeks of surveillance, the courier led them to the sprawling compound in Abbottabad. The house was ringed by tall security fences in a wealthy hamlet, some 120 km from Islamabad.
 
 The raid on bin Laden's hideout was also the culmination of years of painstaking intelligence work, including the interrogation of detainees in secret prisons in eastern Europe.
 
 Prisoners in US custody told stories of a trusted courier, the daily said.
 
 When the Americans ran the man's pseudonym past two top-level detainees, the men claimed never to have heard his name.
 
 Once the CIA got the courier's family name, the National Security Agency began intercepting telephone calls and e-mail messages between the man's family in a Gulf state and anyone inside Pakistan.
 
 From there they got his full name.
 
 After spotting the courier last July in the Suzuki, the CIA sleuths tailed him over the next month throughout central Pakistan.
 
 The Al Qaeda chief was killed in a top secret operation by US commandos in the Abbottabad house Monday.