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Osama bin Laden’s body buried at sea: US official


Mangalore Today / PTI

Washington, May 2: Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s body has been buried at sea, as the United States does not want his burial place to become a terrorist shrine, a US official has said.

 

Osama buried

 

The official said that the body was handled according to Islamic practice and tradition, Fox News reports.

That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official added.

"Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world’s most wanted terrorist would have been difficult. So, the US decided to bury him at sea," the official said.

The Saudi-born terrorist, who had evaded capture for a decade, was killed in a top secret operation involving a small team of US special forces in Abbottabad city, located 50 kilometres northeast of Islamabad and 150 kilometres east of Peshawar, Pakistan.

Under Islamic tradition, the body is washed by Muslim men and buried as soon as possible.

The body is usually buried in a simple white sheet -whether buried in the ground, or at sea.

 

How Osama was found


Helicopters descended out of darkness on the most important counterterrorism mission in US history. It was an operation so secret, only a select few US officials knew what was about to happen.

The location was a fortified compound in an affluent Pakistani town two hours outside Islamabad. The target was Osama bin Laden.

 

Osama killed1


Intelligence officials discovered the compound in August while monitoring an al Qaeda courier. The CIA had been hunting that courier for years, ever since detainees told interrogators that the courier was so trusted by bin Laden that he might very well be living with the al Qaeda leader.

Nestled in an affluent neighbourhood, the compound was surrounded by walls as high as 18 feet, topped with barbed wire. Two security gates guarded the only way in. A third-floor terrace was shielded by a seven-foot privacy wall. No phone lines or Internet cables ran to the property. The residents burned their garbage rather than put it out for collection. Intelligence officials believed the million-dollar compound was built five years ago to protect a major terrorist figure. The question was, who?

The CIA asked itself again and again who might be living behind those walls. Each time, they concluded it was almost certainly bin Laden.

President Barack Obama described the operation in broad strokes on Sunday night. Details were provided in interviews with counterterrorism and intelligence authorities, senior administration officials and other US officials. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation.

By mid-February, intelligence from multiple sources was clear enough that Obama wanted to "pursue an aggressive course of action”, a senior administration official said. Over the next two and a half months, Obama led five meetings of the National Security Council focused solely on whether bin Laden was in that compound and, if so, how to get him, the official said.

Normally, the US shares its counterterrorism intelligence widely with trusted allies in Britain, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. And the US normally does not carry out ground operations inside Pakistan without collaboration with Pakistani intelligence. But this mission was too important and too secretive.

On April 29, Obama approved an operation to kill bin Laden. It was a mission that required surgical accuracy, even more precision than could be delivered by the government`s sophisticated Predator drones. To execute it, Obama tapped a small contingent of the Navy`s elite SEAL Team Six and put them under the command of CIA director Leon Panetta, whose analysts monitored the compound from afar.

Panetta was directly in charge of the team, a US official said, and his conference room was transformed into a command centre.

Details of exactly how the raid unfolded remain murky. But the al Qaeda courier, his brother and one of bin Laden`s sons were killed. No Americans were injured. Senior administration officials will only say that bin Laden "resisted”. And then the man behind the worst terrorist attack on US soil died from an American bullet to his head.

It was mid-afternoon in Virginia when Panetta and his team received word that bin Laden was dead. Cheers and applause broke out across the conference room.

 

Osama’s two wives, four children in custody

Islamabad:  Two wives and four children of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden have been taken into custody after he was killed by US special force’s commandos in Abbottabad in Pakistan.

Two women and four children, described as bin Laden’s wives and offspring, were taken away from the compound, local media reports said.

However it was not immediately known under whose custody they are currently in.

The operation by the elite Navy seals resulted in the death of bin Laden, one of his sons, two suspected couriers and a woman who was being used as a human shield.

Pakistani troops have sealed off the compound and blocked all roads leading to it. Local residents said the compound was bought by a man they knew as Arshad Khan, believed to a resident of Charsadda in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa tribal region.

A two-storey building was constructed in the compound in 2005 and those living inside did not mingle with local residents of the area near Abbottabad, 120 kms from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.


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