[güttsfükk]

Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the ISI, has said it is embarrassed by its failures on al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

An ISI official told the BBC the compound in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was killed by US forces on Sunday had been raided in 2003.

But the compound "was not on our radar" since then, the official said.

President Asif Ali Zardari denied the killing suggested Pakistan was failing in its efforts to tackle terrorism.

Bin Laden, 54, was the founder and leader of al-Qaeda. He is believed to have ordered the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, as well as a number of other deadly bombings.

'Caught by surprise'

The ISI official told the BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones in Islamabad that the compound in Abbottabad, just 100km (62 miles) from the capital, was raided when under construction in 2003.

It was believed an al-Qaeda operative, Abu Faraj al-Libi, was there.

But since then "the compound was not on our radar, it is an embarrassment for the ISI", the official said. "We're good, but we're not God."

The compound is just a few hundred metres from the Pakistan Military Academy - the country's equivalent of West Point or Sandhurst.

The ISI official also gave new or differing accounts of some of the events of Sunday's raid. They included:

• There were 17-18 people in the compound at the time of the attack
  
• The Americans took away one person still alive, possibly a Bin Laden son
  
• Those who survived the attack included a wife, a daughter and eight to nine other children, not apparently Bin Laden's; all had their hands tied by the Americans
  
• The surviving Yemeni wife said they had moved to the compound a few months ago
  
• Bin Laden's daughter, aged 12 or 13, saw her father shot

The official said it was thought the Americans wanted to take away the surviving women and children but had to abandon the plan when one of the helicopters malfunctioned.

The helicopter was destroyed by the special forces unit.

The US has not commented on anyone it captured or had planned to capture, other than saying it had taken Bin Laden's body.

The ISI official said the organisation had recovered some documents from the compound.

The CIA is already said to be going through a large number of hard drives and storage devices seized in the raid.

White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said there had been concern Pakistani forces would deploy to counter the US Navy Seal team conducting the raid but it had avoided any confrontation.

The ISI official said: "We were totally caught by surprise. They were in and out before we could react."

Our correspondent says residents near the compound in Abbottabad reported that Pakistani soldiers had asked them to switch off their lights an hour before the attack, but the ISI official said this was not true and that it had no advanced knowledge of the raid.

Earlier, in an opinion piece in the Washington Post, Mr Zardari admitted Bin Laden "was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be".

But he said Pakistan had "never been and never will be the hotbed of fanaticism that is often described by the media".

"Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn't reflect fact," he said.

"Pakistan had as much reason to despise al-Qaeda as any nation. The war on terrorism is as much Pakistan's war as it is America's."

Mr Brennan had said it was "inconceivable that Bin Laden did not have a support system" in Pakistan.

Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir tried to draw a line under the matter, saying: "Who did what is beside the point... This issue of Osama Bin Laden is history."

'Geronimo'

Bin Laden was America's most wanted man but had eluded capture for more than a decade.

US officials say that after DNA tests they are "99.9%" sure that the man they shot and killed and later buried at sea was Bin Laden.

US President Barack Obama watched the entire operation in real time in the White House with his national security team.

Mr Brennan said: "The minutes passed like days."

CIA director Leon Panetta narrated via a video screen from a separate Washington office, with Bin Laden given the code name Geronimo.

Mr Panetta's narration lasted several minutes. "They've reached the target... We have a visual on Geronimo... Geronimo EKIA (enemy killed in action)."

Mr Obama said: "We got him."

Bin Laden, his son Khalid, trusted personal courier Sheikh Abu Ahmed and the courier's brother were all killed, along with an unidentified woman.

Bin Laden was shot above his left eye, blowing away a section of his skull, and was also shot in the chest.

The BBC's Andrew North in Washington says the White House is still discussing whether to release a video that was made of Bin Laden's burial from an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, which some Islamic scholars have said did not conform with tradition.

Our correspondent says many people will want proof that Bin Laden is dead but the White House will be concerned about the reaction if the video, and still photographs of the body, are released.

Source : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13268517

[RedneckR0nin]

[MasacruAlex]

Our correspondent says many people will want proof that Bin Laden is dead but the White House will be concerned about the reaction if the video, and still photographs of the body, are released.

Americans should make a petition for that.

This is the first time I'm awaiting to see a video / pictures of someone who died lol. I am curious.

[Blewvane]

WASHINGTON/ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's president on Tuesday denied suggestions that his government may have sheltered Osama bin Laden but admitted that his security forces were left out of a U.S. operation to kill the al Qaeda chief.

The revelation that bin Laden had holed up in a luxury compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, possibly for five to six years, prompted many U.S. lawmakers to demand a review of the billions of dollars in aid Washington gives to nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari President, issuing his first formal response to questions about how the world's most-wanted militant was able to live for so long in comfort near Islamabad, did little to dispel suspicions.

"Some in the U.S. press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing," Zardari wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post. "Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn't reflect fact."

It was the first substantive public comment by any Pakistani leader on the airborne raid by U.S. special forces on bin Laden's compound on Monday that brought to an end a long manhunt for the al Qaeda chief who had become the face of Islamic militancy.

Pakistan has faced enormous international scrutiny since bin Laden was killed, with questions over whether its military and intelligence agencies were too incompetent to catch him, r knew all along where he was hiding and even whether they had been complicit.

Reflecting U.S.-Pakistani relations strained by years of mistrust, Islamabad was kept in the dark about the raid until after all U.S. aircraft were out of Pakistani airspace.

"He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone," Zardari wrote, without offering further defense against accusations his security services should have known where bin Laden was hiding.

"Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world."

[Black Knight]

We left out their security forces because who do you think was protecting him and the compound?

Fuck Pakistan as they just proved their stance but harboring this animal for so long.

Sorry but there is NO way the Pakistani army did not know he was staying there.

They knew it, we knew it and intentionally kept them in the dark so we could successfully orchestrate the mission.

[güttsfükk]

Originally Posted by Black Knight ↗

Sorry but there is NO way the Pakistani army did not know he was staying there.

there's nothing obvious about him being there to be fair, if he got smuggled in and never went outside again for years, that compound could just be any rich person's mansion. gotta protect your riches from the thieving poor right ;)

the best place to hide is often where they dont expect it, and no one expected him to be so close to a military base.

[Black Knight]

Originally Posted by güttsfükk ↗

there's nothing obvious about him being there to be fair, if he got smuggled in and never went outside again for years, that compound could just be any rich person's mansion. gotta protect your riches from the thieving poor right ;)

the best place to hide is often where they dont expect it, and no one expected him to be so close to a military base.

I would love to believe that but given the state of the country and being that close to a military base and the capital I would hope they would want to know who is on their door step.

But until more comes out they may not have known (or they are just playing stupid).