Osama bin Laden was a doting grandfather in a cowboy hat: report
Dozens of previously unknown tidbits about Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden emerge from leaked Pakistan report on 2011 raid that killed him.
By: Michelle Shephard National Security Reporter, Published on Tue Jul 09 2013
The most tantalizing image is of Osama bin Laden, strolling through his compound, wearing a cowboy hat to try to throw off overhead surveillance.
The most frustrating: a clean-shaven bin Laden stopped for speeding while on his way to a bazaar in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, waved on by a clueless traffic cop.
These are just two of dozens of previously unknown tidbits emerging from a leaked report by the four-member Abbottabad Commission, an independent group tasked by Pakistan’s government to investigate the 2011 U.S. raid that killed bin Laden.
The report - scathing in its criticism of the “incompetence” of Pakistan’s security forces that allowed the world’s most wanted to man to live under their noses for a decade - has a similar literary flair to the 9/11 Commission Report, which read more like a political thriller than the dense investigation it was.
What this report adds to bin Laden’s story - aside from the stark criticism of Pakistan’s failure to find him - is personal details about bin Laden, as told by his wives.
“Today was Amal’s turn for the Shaikh to be with her,” begins the 366-page report on the night bin Laden (known as the Shaikh) was killed. “She was the youngest of his wives. Their rooms were on the top (or second) floor. The two elder wives, Khairiyyah and Sharifa Siham, had their rooms on the first floor. Like the rest of the rooms of the house, they were cramped and small.
“Suddenly, Amal saw an American soldier on the landing outside the bedroom aiming his weapon at the Shaikh. She saw a red beam of light but heard no sound. She rushed the soldier and grappled with him in an attempt to take his weapon from him. But he screamed ‘No! No!’ and shot her in the knee.”
Bin Laden’s eldest wife, Khairiyyah, says that one of the U.S. soldiers “appeared to be as frightened as she was” when he stormed her room. He “looked as if he had seen a witch,” she reportedly said.
Throughout the ensuing chapters, the commission quotes liberally from the women, who describe life inside the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan where they had lived as a family since 2005.
“How the entire neighbourhood, local officials, police and security and intelligence officials all missed the size, the strange shape, the barbed wire, the lack of cars and visitors, etc., over a period of nearly six years beggars belief,” wrote the commission, led by a Supreme Court judge.
Inside that high-walled compound, the security-conscious bin Laden “trusted in Allah for his protection” but went to great lengths to never be seen on the outside. There are unconfirmed reports that bin Laden suffered from Addison’s disease or a kidney ailment, but the wives said he would not see a doctor, instead treating himself with traditional Arabic medicine.
“Whenever he felt sluggish he would take some chocolate with an apple.”
Family, it seemed, was what consumed much of his time.
“The children of OBL led extremely regimented and secluded lives,” the report states. “OBL personally saw to the religious education of his grandchildren and supervised their play time, which included cultivating vegetable plots with simple prizes for best performance.”
When he was shot dead on May 2, it was his daughter Sumayya who confirmed his killing.
“He had been hit in the forehead and she knew he was dead,” the report states.
This much-anticipated report, which had reportedly been suppressed by Pakistan’s government for six months, is the latest in a trilogy of accounts on how the Al Qaeda leader lived and died.
First came the salacious details from Washington in the days after his May 2, 2011 killing, which essentially concluded that bin Laden was a vainglorious sissy who spent his days watching porn and reruns of himself, used Just For Men to dye his beard, and needed his wife to protect him when he was confronted by U.S. Navy SEALs.
Much of it wasn’t true, but that took a while to sort out.
Next was the data dump of what was known as the “treasure trove” of documents found in the Abbottabad compound, which helped disclose some of Al Qaeda’s inner workings and bin Laden’s frustration with the organization’s “franchise” operations in Yemen and Somalia.
While this latest report’s main findings are on Pakistan’s involvement - or lack thereof - in bin Laden’s eventual capture, its authors also state that the U.S. “acted as a criminal thug,” flouting rules of sovereignty and international laws. That may have been a concern for Pakistan’s leaders, but not at first.
“The U.S. raid was not a capture-or-kill mission. It was a kill mission,” they write. “It was accordingly a criminal act of murder which was condemned by a number of international lawyers and human rights organizations. It was, however, welcomed in the initial communications of the president and prime minster of Pakistan.”
Report on Al-Jazeera report: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/07/08/osama_bin_laden_report_accuses_pakistan_of_incompetence.html
Source
OP Note: I did not see this posted and thought that some people might be interested. Personally, I thought Pakistan's government had a non-extraditing policy or something like that, which was the cause of him not being caught until recently.
By: Michelle Shephard National Security Reporter, Published on Tue Jul 09 2013
The most tantalizing image is of Osama bin Laden, strolling through his compound, wearing a cowboy hat to try to throw off overhead surveillance.
The most frustrating: a clean-shaven bin Laden stopped for speeding while on his way to a bazaar in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, waved on by a clueless traffic cop.
These are just two of dozens of previously unknown tidbits emerging from a leaked report by the four-member Abbottabad Commission, an independent group tasked by Pakistan’s government to investigate the 2011 U.S. raid that killed bin Laden.
The report - scathing in its criticism of the “incompetence” of Pakistan’s security forces that allowed the world’s most wanted to man to live under their noses for a decade - has a similar literary flair to the 9/11 Commission Report, which read more like a political thriller than the dense investigation it was.
What this report adds to bin Laden’s story - aside from the stark criticism of Pakistan’s failure to find him - is personal details about bin Laden, as told by his wives.
“Today was Amal’s turn for the Shaikh to be with her,” begins the 366-page report on the night bin Laden (known as the Shaikh) was killed. “She was the youngest of his wives. Their rooms were on the top (or second) floor. The two elder wives, Khairiyyah and Sharifa Siham, had their rooms on the first floor. Like the rest of the rooms of the house, they were cramped and small.
“Suddenly, Amal saw an American soldier on the landing outside the bedroom aiming his weapon at the Shaikh. She saw a red beam of light but heard no sound. She rushed the soldier and grappled with him in an attempt to take his weapon from him. But he screamed ‘No! No!’ and shot her in the knee.”
Bin Laden’s eldest wife, Khairiyyah, says that one of the U.S. soldiers “appeared to be as frightened as she was” when he stormed her room. He “looked as if he had seen a witch,” she reportedly said.
Throughout the ensuing chapters, the commission quotes liberally from the women, who describe life inside the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan where they had lived as a family since 2005.
“How the entire neighbourhood, local officials, police and security and intelligence officials all missed the size, the strange shape, the barbed wire, the lack of cars and visitors, etc., over a period of nearly six years beggars belief,” wrote the commission, led by a Supreme Court judge.
Inside that high-walled compound, the security-conscious bin Laden “trusted in Allah for his protection” but went to great lengths to never be seen on the outside. There are unconfirmed reports that bin Laden suffered from Addison’s disease or a kidney ailment, but the wives said he would not see a doctor, instead treating himself with traditional Arabic medicine.
“Whenever he felt sluggish he would take some chocolate with an apple.”
Family, it seemed, was what consumed much of his time.
“The children of OBL led extremely regimented and secluded lives,” the report states. “OBL personally saw to the religious education of his grandchildren and supervised their play time, which included cultivating vegetable plots with simple prizes for best performance.”
When he was shot dead on May 2, it was his daughter Sumayya who confirmed his killing.
“He had been hit in the forehead and she knew he was dead,” the report states.
This much-anticipated report, which had reportedly been suppressed by Pakistan’s government for six months, is the latest in a trilogy of accounts on how the Al Qaeda leader lived and died.
First came the salacious details from Washington in the days after his May 2, 2011 killing, which essentially concluded that bin Laden was a vainglorious sissy who spent his days watching porn and reruns of himself, used Just For Men to dye his beard, and needed his wife to protect him when he was confronted by U.S. Navy SEALs.
Much of it wasn’t true, but that took a while to sort out.
Next was the data dump of what was known as the “treasure trove” of documents found in the Abbottabad compound, which helped disclose some of Al Qaeda’s inner workings and bin Laden’s frustration with the organization’s “franchise” operations in Yemen and Somalia.
While this latest report’s main findings are on Pakistan’s involvement - or lack thereof - in bin Laden’s eventual capture, its authors also state that the U.S. “acted as a criminal thug,” flouting rules of sovereignty and international laws. That may have been a concern for Pakistan’s leaders, but not at first.
“The U.S. raid was not a capture-or-kill mission. It was a kill mission,” they write. “It was accordingly a criminal act of murder which was condemned by a number of international lawyers and human rights organizations. It was, however, welcomed in the initial communications of the president and prime minster of Pakistan.”
Report on Al-Jazeera report: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/07/08/osama_bin_laden_report_accuses_pakistan_of_incompetence.html
Source
OP Note: I did not see this posted and thought that some people might be interested. Personally, I thought Pakistan's government had a non-extraditing policy or something like that, which was the cause of him not being caught until recently.