Tag: Osama bin Laden (page 2)

What a faux headline from the AP, "Diary: Bin Laden eyed new targets, big body count." From the body of the article:

Intelligence officials have not identified any new planned targets or plots in their initial analysis of the 100 or so flash drives and five computers that Navy SEALs hauled away after killing bin Laden.

....Officials have not yet seen any indication that bin Laden had the ability to coordinate timing of attacks across the various al-Qaida affiliates in Pakistan, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq and Somalia.

They can't even conclude AQAP and the other al Qaida groups paid attention to his musings. AQAP is far more relevant and operational than Osama. [More...]

Pakistan and the U.S. say they are still in dialogues over the U.S. "interviews" of Osama bin Laden's three wives. What's holding it up and why does Pakistan say it has not yet received a formal request for access?

My guess: The U.S. is not just asking for permission to interview the women in Pakistan. It wants to extradite them to the U.S. for interrogation. The State Department is now making statements about the women and the interview requests. Why would they be involved if extradition was not on the horizon? State Department Spokesman Mark Toner said yesterday: [More....]

The Telegraph (UK) is reporting that Osama bin Laden's son, Hamza bin Laden, may have escaped from the compound during the raid at Abbottabad. ABC News reports Hamza is unaccounted for. (More on the Hamza confusion here and here.)

Hamza, who reportedly was living at the compound, along with his mother who is in Pakistani custody, has not been accounted for. Some say he was removed by the commandos along with Osama bin Laden -- with conflicting reports on whether he was dead or alive when captured. [More...]

Bump and Update: CNN reports a U.S. official has confirmed that the other two wives in the Osama bin Laden compound are, as I have been speculating for a few days, Khairia Saaba otherwise known as Umm Hamzah and Siham Sabar, also known as Umm Khalid. CNN reports a Pakistani intelligence source has told them today that Pakistan will allow the U.S. to interview (interrogate) the wives only if their home countries approve. (Yemen and Saudi Arabia are the home countries.) The AP reports differently, and says Pakistan will allow the U.S. to question the wives.

Original Post: Pakistan to Send Bin Laden's Widow Back to Yemen

The U.S. may not get its wish to interrogate the 29 year old widow of Osama bin Laden, Aml Ahmed Abdul Al-Fatah Al-Sada of Yemen. Pakistan officials say she will be returned to Yemen after they complete their questioning of her.[More...]

Pakistan Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani addressed the country's Parliament today. He said the unilateral raid on Osama bin Laden's compound was regrettable. Pakistan will conduct an investigation into how Osama hid in Abbottabad for so long. He also said in the future, "any attack on strategic assets would be retaliated with full force."

Gilani said "the US used its technological ability to evade Pakistan’s radar system." He also called for more information sharing, and "an end to the blame game."

He also denied Pakistani ISI was in cahoots with Osama or al Qaeda: [More...]

President Obama is still walking a tight line when it comes to Pakistan's possible role in sheltering Osama bin Laden. On "60 Minutes", taped a few days ago but airing tonight:

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don't know who or what that support network was. We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate. And we've already communicated to them, and they have indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had. But these are questions that we're not going to be able to answer three or four days after the event. It's going to take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on site.

The full interview, transcript and video, is here.

"When I look at the television,
I want to see me staring right back at me
We all want to be big stars,
... when everybody loves me,
I'm going to be just about as happy as I can be"

What is the big deal about Osama bin Laden watching videos of himself on TV? Who cares? Why release them now? Is it to deflect attention from the bungled narrative Administration officials presented all week as to what happened during the raid on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad? Does the Administratin think they show us something negative we didn't know about Osama?

The Administration should count its blessings that everyone is glad Osama is dead, otherwise it could be in deep doo-doo over this raid and have a lot more explaining to do, particularly over its relationship with Pakistan's military and intelligence agency, which is costing us a fortune. There sure doesn't seem to be much bang for the buck. [More...]

Every day brings new details as to who was in the compound at Abbottabad and what happened inside. (Yesterday's is here.) Pakistani officials have now disclosed additional details from their debriefing of Osama bin Laden's wife, Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, who was shot in the leg:

• Prior to moving to the compound in Abbottabad in 2005, Osama and his family lived in a village called Chak Shah Mohammad Khan, in the district of Haripur, for nearly two and a half years.

  
  Chak Shah Mohammad, situated on the highway to Abbottabad, is two kilometres to the southeast of Haripur town. In retrospect that meant, one of the officials observed, Osama had left the country’s tribal region sometime in 2003 to live in a settled area.

  ...“Imagine, this guy was living in our midst in Haripur and Abbottabad for seven and a half years and we all, both Pakistanis and Americans, had been looking for him in the wrong direction,” one official remarked.

• Osama was hale and hearty. He had recovered from his kidney issues years ago after having two surgeries in Kandahar. He relied on homemade remedies that included a lot of watermelon.

[More...]

Finally, Pakistani officials disclose which son of Osama bin Laden was killed by commandos in the raid on the compound in Abbottabad. They say it was Khalid bin Laden.

[W]ell-informed sources in the Pakistani security establishment claim that Osama’s dead son was not Hamza bin Laden but Khalid bin Laden. Besides Osama, Hamza bin Laden is also wanted by the United States for his involvement in terrorist activities directed against the US-led Allied Forces in Afghanistan.

This matches information first released by the U.S., but curiously changed in the transcript of the briefing and then changed back again. [More...]

Here's the English translation of Al Qaida's statement confirming the death of Osama bin Laden. It says it will release Osama's final taped statement made one week before he was killed.

"The sheikh (OBL) didn’t leave this world before taking part in sharing the joy with his Muslim Umma (nation) regarding its revolutions when the nation has risen in the face of injustice and the tyrants and may God have mercy on him, the sheikh recorded an audio message one week before his killing that we will release soon, God willing and his audio message included a congratulation greeting, advices and a guidance.

Aside from the usual threats, the group had a warning about what would happen if bin Laden's body was mistreated and demanded that the other bodies at the compound be turned over to the families of the deceased: [More...]

Here's the latest from The Guardian, with information reported by U.S. media from statements of officials, and statements by Pakistani officials who interviewed the survivors.

The consistencies: The only shot fired was by the occupant of the guest house. The commandos approached the guest house first, were fired on by the occupant, and fired back, killing the man and his wife.

The guest house was divided from the main house by a big wall. There was no firefight after the guest house and no armed resistance in the main house. In other words, those clarifications by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and the statements of Leon Panetta about prolonged firefights were wrong. [More...]

Update: MSNBC reports only one person at the compound in Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden was killed was armed, the "courier", and he was in the guest house, not the main house. He and his wife who was with him were killed first, before a second team of commandos even entered the compound.

None of those in the main house were armed, including Bin Laden's son, who was killed coming down the stairs as the commandos were going up. The account is so different from all the versions the White House and Panetta have provided, you really need to read it. There was no firefight inside the house, the only people with guns and shooting were the commandos.

Osama was in his pajamas. There were 22 women and children in the house. Original post below:[More...]