New Delhi: The top Pakistani leadership knew about the presence of Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist, in their country long before the US killed him in a midnight raid in May 2011, former Pakistan defence minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar has revealed.

The then president Asif Ali Zardari, then army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and other top officials all knew that bin Laden was in Pakistan, Mukhtar, who was defence minister then, told news channel CNN-IBN in an interview, the channel said in a statement.