The US operation to kill or capture
Osama Bin Laden was months in the
planning but took just minutes to
complete. In a daring raid 120 miles (192km)
inside Pakistan, a team of US special
forces flew from Afghanistan to Bin
Laden's hiding place in the dead of
night. They swooped down on the
compound in stealth helicopters, swept through the buildings within the high
walled enclosure and shot dead a total
of five people including Bin Laden. Around 40 minutes later they left,
taking with them Bin Laden's body and
a hoard of computer data devices and
other information containing
intelligence about al-Qaeda and Bin
Laden's activities. They left behind the other dead, among
whom were a woman and one of Bin
Laden's sons. They also left a group of
three women and 13 children - two
girls and 11 boys - bound with plastic
ties.
The US operation to kill or capture
Osama Bin Laden was months in the
planning but took just minutes to
complete. In a daring raid 120 miles (192km)
inside Pakistan, a team of US special
forces flew from Afghanistan to Bin
Laden's hiding place in the dead of
night. They swooped down on the
compound in stealth helicopters, swept through the buildings within the high
walled enclosure and shot dead a total
of five people including Bin Laden. Around 40 minutes later they left,
taking with them Bin Laden's body and
a hoard of computer data devices and
other information containing
intelligence about al-Qaeda and Bin
Laden's activities. They left behind the other dead, among
whom were a woman and one of Bin
Laden's sons. They also left a group of
three women and 13 children - two
girls and 11 boys - bound with plastic
ties.
What follows has been pieced together
from official US statements and off-the-
record interviews, other news sources
and BBC interviews with those living
near the compound in Abbottabad, the
quiet, leafy garrison town 35 miles north of the Pakistani capital,
Islamabad. Just a handful of US military and senior
officials around President Obama knew
of the planned raid. However, within
seconds of the arrival of the US
helicopters overhead in Abbottabad on
Monday, their presence was being advertised on Twitter. "Helicopter hovering above
Abbotttabad at 1am (is a rare event),"
tweeted Sohaib Athar, an IT engineer
who lives about 3km (two miles) from
the compound. Eleven minutes later Athar reported: "A
huge window-shaking bang here in
Abbottabad. I hope it's not the start of
something nasty." On the other side of the world President
Obama and his closest advisers had
gathered in the White House situation
room to monitor progress of the
assault. A few miles away, at CIA
headquarters, the spy agency's director Leon Panetta sat in a windowless
seventh floor room, which had been
turned into a command centre. From there he fed the president and his
team details of the raid as it unfolded.
The operation now under way was the
culmination of weeks of detailed
surveillance and planning involving
some of the United States' most sophisticated technology. Planning for the raid started late last
year. US officials have spoken of how an
intercept in late August 2010 of a
phone call to a trusted courier of Bin
Laden in Pakistan was a breakthrough
that led to the raid. The call was made to Abu Ahmed al-
Kuwaiti, a man the US had been seeking
for years as part of the decade long hunt for Bin Laden. Controversially, they had learnt of his identity from
interrogations of detainees in
Guantanamo. Armed with the mobile
phone number, the US was able to track
him to the compound in Abbottabad.
It was unusual. High walls prevented
anyone from seeing in and privacy
screens on the main building's balconies
blocked all sight lines. It had no phone
or internet connection and all rubbish was burnt inside the high walls rather than being collected as usual. Access to the site was through a tall
green metal security gate which led
into a passageway with high walls
either side, and another security gate
leading to an inner compound at the
other end. According to neighbours who spoke to the BBC, the occupants rarely went out and when they did so - in either a
red Suzuki jeep or van - they passed
through security doors that closed
immediately afterwards. US intelligence soon began an intensive
period of surveillance. While satellites
watched from the sky a CIA safe house
was set up nearby. From the safe house, agents were able
to observe the comings and goings
from the compound in order to
establish a "pattern of life" at the
building. Some details of how they tried
to obtain key information about the building have emerged.
Locals told the BBC that in the weeks
leading up to the raid, people in
"simple, plain clothes" knocked on
doors in the neighbourhood posing as
prospective property buyers. They
would admire the homes and ask for any architectural plans, saying that they
wanted to build something similar. One of the men even went to Bin
Laden's compound to make inquiries,
they said. The CIA also employed a sophisticated
stealth drone that could float high
about the compound without detection
by the Pakistani authorities. With its distinctive bat-winged shape,
the RQ170 Sentinel is capable of flying undetected at high altitude taking
photographs and sending real-time
video. The aircraft can also capture
images shot at an angle. This has the
advantage of not having to fly directly
over its target. Despite the presence on the ground and
observation from the sky, the CIA was
still unable to positively identify Bin
Laden as the man often spotted often
walking up and down outside the
house. Agents dubbed him "the pacer". He and his associates went to
extraordinary efforts to remain
undetected. According to a detailed
account of the lead-up to the raid in the
Washington Post, US officials were
"stunned to realise that whenever Kuwaiti or others left to make a call,
they drove for 90 minutes before
placing" a battery in a mobile phone. In the meantime, a team from the
secretive US Navy Seal Team 6 unit, had been practising storming a mock up
of the compound, constructed at US
bases on both coasts. The raid In the end, after months of
investigation, the US had no conclusive
proof of Bin Laden's presence in the
compound. As President Obama told
CBS television news, "this was still a
55/45 situation." Nevertheless, 2 May presented a
moonless night on which to mount the
raid. The president formally gave the
go-ahead on the morning of Friday 29
April. But despite the detailed planning, the
operation began to go wrong almost as
soon as the raiders appeared overhead. Five aircraft flew two teams of Navy
Seals from a US base in Jalalabad,
Afghanistan, into Pakistan. Three large
Chinook helicopters carrying a back-up
team of 24 Seals put down near the
Indus River, a 10-minute flight from the compound. The two other aircraft, specially adapted Black Hawk helicopters , flew on to Abbottabad. On board,
were 23 Seals, a translator and a
tracking dog called Cairo. Three of the
Seals were specifically tasked to seek
out Bin Laden. In the original plan, one of the
helicopters was to hover over the main
building allowing the Seals to clamber
down ropes onto the roof. The other
was to drop its team within the
grounds of the compound. This should have taken just a couple of minutes
allowing the aircraft to fly away,
thereby attracting less attention. However, on arrival, the Black Hawk
hovering over Bin Laden's building
skittered around in the heat-thinned air
forcing the pilot to ditch the craft into
the ground. It made a hard landing
inside the compound but its tail and rotor caught on one of the high walls. The other aircraft immediately landed
outside the walls. Both teams
clambered out unhurt but they had
now lost the element of surprise and
had to start blasting their way into the
compound. Behind the perimeter walls were
further inner walls cordoning off the
three-storey main building where Bin
Laden and his family lived and a smaller
single-storey guard house. Leon Panetta, the CIA chief, has said the
commandos blasted their way through
"three or four" walls to get into the
buildings. As the raid got under way,
Panetta said, he and those in the White
House situation room were in the dark for "around 20-25 minutes" as to what
was actually going on in the compound. According to US officials, as the
members of the US team moved to
search the buildings they were fired on
by one of the two brothers who were
close confidantes of Bin Laden. Al-
Kuwaiti is said to have fired from behind a door of the guard house. The
Navy Seals killed him and his wife, who
reportedly made a lunge for the
soldiers. Moving into the main building the
commandos come across al-Kuwaiti's
brother on the ground floor. Believing
that he was about to shoot, they shot
him dead. On the way up the stairs, Bin Laden's adult son, Khalid Bin Laden , met the Navy Seal team. He too was
shot and killed. 'We got him' On the top floor the trio of Seals looking
for Bin Laden found him, some 20
minutes into the raid, standing at the
end of the corridor. They recognised
him immediately. He also saw them
and ducked back inside a room. Initial US accounts of the mission said
that before he was killed he had
exchanged fire with the commandos
while using his wife as a human shield.
US officials have now told the
Associated Press news agency that after the Seals rushed into the room, they
found two women in front of Bin
Laden, screaming and trying to protect
him. One of the soldiers pushed the women
aside, the Seal behind him fired at Bin
Laden, hitting him in the head and chest
killing him instantly. A later account from one of the Seals involved in the raid suggested that there was no fire fight
with the US soldiers. According to this account, Bin Laden
was killed as soon as he stuck his head
out of his bedroom. He was still alive
although badly injured when the Seal
team entered the room where they
shot him again killing him. After the shooting, one of the soldiers
radioed his commanders: "Geronimo
EKIA". In the cold military jargon,
"EKIA" (Enemy killed in action) signalled
that the team had killed their target. The message was relayed to the White
House where President Obama is said to
have received the news with a terse
"We got him". Those in the situation room did not see the moment of Bin
Laden's death. Geronimo, it has been suggested was
the code name for Bin Laden, but US
officials have indicated that this
referred to the stage in the operation in
which Bin Laden was either captured or
killed. As they began photographing his body,
an AK-47 and a Russian-made Makarov
pistol were discovered in the room, but
Bin Laden had not touched them. Earlier reports suggested that Bin
Laden's wife, believed to be 29-year-
old Amal al-Ahmed Sadah, was in the
room with him and was shot in the leg
when she lunged at the soldiers.
Pakistani police say that the couple's 12-year-old daughter was also in the room and witnessed Bin Laden's death . As the minutes ticked by, a suspicious
Pakistani air force began scrambling
some of its fighter jets, heightening
fears in Washington that the US
commandos could still be in danger as
they tried to return to Afghanistan. Pakistan was not tipped off in advance
about the raid although a Pakistani
intelligence official told the BBC that
once US helicopters entered Pakistan air
space the US officials told their
counterparts that an operation was under way against "a high value
target". They were not told the target
was Bin Laden. This ultimately led to
the jets being called back. With Bin Laden dead, the US team
prepared to leave. They trawled through the rest of the
compound collecting a "treasure trove" of documents, computer hard drives, memory sticks and other material that could provide useful intelligence. One of the Chinooks flew in to collect
the team from the broken helicopter.
They loaded up Bin Laden's body,
corralled those still alive into a room,
piled explosives into the damaged
aircraft and blew it up. They then left for the US air base in Bagram,
Afghanistan. One neighbour in Abbottabad told the
BBC how one of the departing
helicopters swept past his house,
"flying very low, coming very close". "I threw myself to the ground thinking
it was going to collide with my house,"
Zahoor Abbasi said. From there Bin Laden's body was flown
to the USS Carl Vinson, a US aircraft
carrier in the north Arabian sea, where
Bin Laden was prepared for burial. A
White House spokesman said the corpse
was prepared for burial "in conformance with Islamic precepts and
practice", then placed in a weighted bag
and dropped into the water from the
vessel's deck. Officials said this was to prevent his
grave from becoming a shrine..
http://m.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13257330