Cairo: Journalist and film producer Essam Deraz, who says he spent several months by the side of Osama bin Laden between 1987 and 1992, describes the Islamist militant as a "courageous fighter" who did not hesitate to enter the front lines.

The meeting with Deraz took place before an Islamist Website posted a letter on August 26 attributed to Laden calling on the Afghan people to wage 'jihad' against US forces.

Deraz met Laden for the first time "with a friend as intermediary" in Medina, Saudi Arabia in 1987, before meeting him again the same year in Peshawar, Pakistan, and next in Afghanistan

"He was a courageous fighter, who directed reconnaissance operations," he said displaying in his Cairo apartment photographs of himself in the company of Laden, the Saudi billionaire whom the United States holds responsible for September 11 terrorist attacks.

"In 1988 and 1989, in Jalalabad, in Afghanistan, he was at the head of a group of fighters... One day, we went together to do reconnaissance of the outskirts of Jalalabad airport. You could see the Russian troops," Essam Deraz says.

"Another time in the same region, we were together in a jeep that he drove, and men distributed munitions in different places. We were very close to the Soviet forces," added the former Egyptian army captain, who produced several films on the Afghan resistance.

"He was in good health, but had very weak blood pressure. Ayman al-Zawahri (the Egyptian doctor who became Laden's right-hand man) examined him every two or three days."

Deraz, who affirmed having spent several months with Laden in the course of some 20 visits, emphasises the "modesty" of the United States's most wanted man.

"He did not consider himself different from the others, and we shared the same aluminium mess tin. He did not raise his voice with the men and had the traditional attitude of the Arabs towards welcoming visitors, taking great care of them."

According to him Bin Laden was never an agent of the CIA, or someone placed in Afghanistan by the Americans, as many in the media have claimed.

"He did not need to be the agent of a country or of an intelligence service. He was very rich and did not need to sell himself," Deraz said adding "He went to Afghanistan out of conviction, as Islam teaches, to defend the oppressed."

According to the Egyptian journalist, who says he witnessed the Islamist's first public denunciation of the United States in a Saudi mosque in 1990, "Bin Laden is certainly dead today, as the majority of his bodyguards have died or been taken prisoner by US-led forces."

CNN reached the same conclusion at the end of July, reporting that some US officials had concluded that the presence of some of Laden's bodyguards among the prisoners held by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, suggested that the al-Qaida leader was probably dead.