New Delhi: It's the night that changed the world. An event that has gone down in history. A defining moment in the War on Terror. The killing of the world's most wanted man, Osama Bin Laden.
Here's the story as we know it so far. As the world has known it so far. A story that's been told and re-told over the years. Osama Bin Laden was staying in a fortified compound in Abbottabad, a small military town less than a 100 kilometres from Pakistan's capital Islamabad. On the intervening night of May 1 and 2, commandos of US Navy Seals Team 6 flew in from Afghanistan on two Black Hawks.
They flew below radar level to avoid detection. The whole operation lasted a little over 3 hours in which Osama bin Laden, one of his brothers, a courier and two others were killed.
The world came to know of it hours later in a dramatic late-night press conference by US President Barack Obama.
A supremely satisfied Barack Obama said, “Tonight I can report to the people of America that the United States has carried out an operation that has killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda."
All through this the Pakistanis were completely unaware. So we were made to believe. But were the Pakistanis really ignorant about the presence of the world's most wanted terrorist on their soil?
How could Osama have lived in Pakistan undetected for more than nine years, five of those years inside four storey compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad?
Did someone in the Pakistani leadership, military, intelligence or civilian know about Osama?
CNN-IBN brings you the Truth and exposes Pakistan. The story that's never been heard before. A lie that's been carefully protected all these years. The truth behind the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan Osama's benefactor
Chaudhary Ahmed Mukthar was the defence minister of Pakistan between 2008 and 2012. He was part of the top five ministers in the cabinet of the then prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.
A long time member of the Pakistan People's Party, Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar had the ear of his boss, President Asif Ali Zardari. And now for the first time, four and a half years after the killing of Osama Bin Laden, an insider reveals the truth. The truth that Pakistan has deliberately and carefully hid from the rest of the world.
Question: Did this word spread above in the chain of command, did the President know about it, did the Prime Minister know about it? At what level was this information shared?
Answer: The people who were part and parcel of the whole action like the President of Pakistan, the Armed Forces Chief, the Joint Chief of Staff and the agency people, they were all activated and they were all waiting for orders for them to come out with their teams and provide all the information which they should have done earlier.
Question: So President Zardari, you are saying knew about it, General Kayani, the then Army Chief had information about it and there were people both in the civilian and military chain of command who had prior information about Osama?
Answer: Yeah
Hear and read it again ladies and gentlemen. For the first time, a sitting Pakistani minister of that time, had admitted on camera that his government knew of the presence of Osama Bin Laden on Pakistani soil.
Question: So President Zardari you are saying knew about it, General Kayani, the then Army Chief had information about it and there were people both in the civilian and military chain of command who had prior information about Osama?
Answer: Yeah
That's not all. Chaudhary Mukthar continues to reveal more about how the Pakistani Army and the ISI had prior knowledge of the world's most wanted man living on their soil.
Question: In terms of your suspicion of the location of the world's most wanted man, you did have prior information and that information was shared with both the civilian and military chain of command?
Answer: Some people knew, people in the Pakistan Army as well as people in the other forces they also knew it and they were on the lookout for somebody of the stature of Osama Bin Laden.
Pakistan defence falls flat
Here's why this is important. Contrast the admission by the then Pakistan defence minister to all the official reactions of Pakistani authorities in the immediate aftermath of Osama's killing.
"I categorically deny any role, any assistance from any Pak official or establishment. The way he hid himself, we could not identify him," Rehman Malik, the then interior minister, had said on May 10, 2011.
Former Pakistani Army chief and dictator General Pervez Musharraf had maintained a similar stand. "As far as I am concerned, I am 500% sure that I did not know, whether anyone believes it or not. So I am clear there is no complicity. And I am also clear that army and ISI could not have hidden it from me. Because I am from them and they are from me," he had said on October 27, 2011.
Also Read: How CNN-IBN’s Investigative Journalist Manoj Gupta got the biggest scoop on Osama bin Laden
Pakistan continues to hold the same position to this day, a denial, the art of which has been perfected by Pakistan's state institutions. Now the then Pakistan Defence Minister has blown the lid out of this denial as to why this narrative was not countered.
Question: So when this story happened and it's been a little over four years since that earth shattering event happened, why is it that this impression has gone to the rest of the world that it's only the Americans who knew about it, this operation was in complete stealth and the Pakistani authorities were completely in the dark?
Answer: If you are trying to get hold of a gentleman who has been hiding away in the mountains for more than 15-18 years, then these kind of people are difficult to be found and once you find them they normally don't live after that. They attempt committing suicide. They would attempt to finish off their bodies by just killing themselves. I don't know why he didn't run away himself?
So the Pakistanis were all along simply hoping that Osama, if found, would just kill himself, like most terrorists do.
Listen to it once again. On the record. The then Defence Minister of Pakistan saying they knew about the presence of the world's most wanted man, less than a 100 kilometres from Pakistan's capital Islamabad.
Question: Did this word spread above in the chain of command, did the President know about it, did the Prime Minister know about it? At what level was this information shared?
Answer: The people who were part and parcel of the whole action like the President of Pakistan, the Armed Forces Chief, the joint chief of Staff and the agency people they were all activated and they were all waiting for orders for them to come out with their teams and provide all the information which they should have done earlier.
Question: So President Zardari you are saying knew about it, General Kayani, the then Army Chief had information about it and there were people both in the civilian and military chain of command who had prior information about Osama?
Answer: Yeah
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