By ALAN PERROTT and AGENCIES
The most hunted man in the world took time out from planning terrorist attacks to reassure his mother, according to the transcript of an intercepted call uncovered yesterday.
Osama bin Laden is reported to have called his mother two days before the attacks on America saying: "In two days you're going to hear big news and you're not going to hear from me again".
The NBC in America and Britain's Daily Telegraph said yesterday that the call was intercepted by an unnamed foreign intelligence service.
American intelligence sources would not confirm which country had recorded the call.
But they said bin Laden's mother, Al-Khalifa bin Laden, was apparently in a Paris hospital for a checkup the day the call was made.
United States Justice Department spokesman Dan Nelson said he could not discuss the call.
Mrs bin Laden was one of many wives of Osama's father.
She was not his actual mother but raised him in their extended family of 52 brothers and sisters.
Although bin Laden has been ostracised by most of his family he has apparently stayed in touch with his adopted mother.
Meanwhile, more members of bin Laden's al Qaeda network are being swept up in the worldwide campaign against terror.
President George W. Bush yesterday announced the arrests of nearly 150 suspected terrorists and their supporters in 25 countries.
"We're finding out members of the al Qaeda organisation, who they are, where they think they can hide, and we're slowly but surely bringing them to justice," the President said.
The arrests included Zayd Hassan Abd Al-Latif Masud Al-Safarini, the man believed to be behind a 1986 hijacking of a Pan Am flight in Pakistan which left two Americans dead.
Al-Safarini has no known ties to bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
FBI officials also confirmed that they had arrested or detained 480 individuals as part of their investigation of the September 11 attacks that have left about 5700 people dead or missing.
But as US investigators pursued 238,000 leads received since the attacks, their attention is moving outside America to where those behind the hijackers hatched their plot.
Law enforcement and intelligence officials looked into reports yesterday that two days before the strikes, three of the suspected hijackers - Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Waleed al-Shehri - each wired $US5000 ($12,342) to a Saudi man in the United Arab Emirates, who then quickly left for Pakistan.
The transfers, made through Western Union in Laurel, Maryland, apparently represented leftover money from preparations for the terrorist attacks and were addressed to Mustafa Ahmad, a long-time bin Laden associate, the officials said.
Meanwhile, according to unconfirmed reports, the US probe may be closing in on bin Laden, America's "prime suspect" in the attacks.
President Bush also said investigators following the terrorist money trail had succeeded in finding and freezing $US6 million in bank accounts linked to terrorist activity.
"We've frozen 30 al Qaeda accounts in the United States and 20 overseas, and we're just beginning," the President said.
As investigators began sweeping computer databases in search of suspects, German news media reported that their police had begun questioning up to 20 students at Hamburg-Harburg Technical University who have profiles similar to the hijackers.
In Bosnia, a spokesman for Nato-led peacekeepers said four people arrested there last week were "suspected of involvement with support for terrorist activities" and would remain in custody.
The Bosnian weekly Ljiljan identified two of them as Abd-Elhalima Khafagia of Egypt and Jehad Ahmad El-Jamala of Jordan.
European investigators are reportedly chasing 14 Afghan-trained jet pilots who have served in the Taleban air force or have links to bin Laden.
The men, who included Pakistani, Afghan and various Middle Eastern nationals, may be on false US passports.
Map: Opposing forces in the war against terror