Leaked report suggests Pakistan was “incompetent” over Bin Laden

Sheer incompetence and negligence led the Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden to live in Pakistan for more than a decade, a leaked government report has revealed.

According to the report leaked to Al-Jazeera, the killing of Bin Laden by US forces was a “criminal act of murder” ordered by the US president.

The 336 page document based on interviews with more than 200 witnesses, including senior civilians and military officials as well as with Bin Laden’s three widows revealed the details of Bin Laden’s whereabouts and day- day to life after he fled from Afghanistan in 2001.

The findings provide details of the frugal lifestyle of the dead Al-Qaeda leader and his family with minimum security and bare essentials in his residential compound at Abbottabad where he was detected and killed by the US troops in May 2011.

It mentions that Bin Laden stayed in parts of South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Swat and Haripur before he settled in Abbottabad in 2005.

The leaked document criticises the US Navy Seal raid at Abbottabad and states that his killing was an “American Act of War” and Pakistan’s “greatest humiliation”.

The US had suspected Bin Laden’s location previously but it was dismissed by Pakistan. However, after the raid, Pakistan’s parliament called for an independent inquiry to investigate into the failures of the government and intelligence services to detect the US’s CIA activities on its soil.

The report describes the lack of intelligence as “government implosion syndrome” and it condemns the Pakistani government and military, describing it as “culpable negligence and incompetence at almost all levels of government”.

Aastha Gill