The Abbottabad Commission Report has termed the May 2, 2011 operation, which killed former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as the collective failure of government and military authorities.
According to report, the US Navy SEALs were provided with strategic ground support/intelligence for the operation to incarcerate the world’s most wanted man.
The report stated that the Osama bin Laden’s stay in the country for more than nine years and his subsequent killing by the US troops in a covert operation in Pakistani territory was the collective failure and negligence of authorities.
”OBL was able to stay within the limits of Abbottabad Cantonment due to a collective failure of the military authorities, the intelligence authorities, the police and the civilian administration,” said the report. “This failure included negligence and incompetence and at some undetermined level a grave complicity may or may not have involved,” it added.
The report alleged that all the government and military authorities failed in planning at any level and the US operation was equal to the war against Pakistan.
“How the entire neighbourhood, local officials, police and security and intelligence officials all missed the size, the strange shape, the barbed wire, the lack of cars and visitors etc over a period of nearly six years beggars belief,” the report said.
“There was also extensive complacency, inefficiency and negligence in the local civil administration, the police and the civil and military intelligence agencies and security authorities of the cantonment area,” it added.
The statements of Osama’s spouses are also included in the report.
According to his wives, Osama fled from Afghanistan in 2001 following US-led invasion on the country and arrived in Pakistan in spring 2002 where he stayed for about nine years.
The report said a total of five persons were killed in Abbottabad operation, including Osama bin Laden, his son Khalid, two bodyguard brothers of Osama – Abrar and Ibrahim – and Abrar’s wife Bushra.
The Abbottabad Commission was constituted under the headship of Justice (R) Javed Iqbal to probe the May 2 operation, one of the most embarrassing episodes in Pakistan’s history. .
The report said that Dr. Shakil Afridi, who helped US authorities to get access to Osama, first met CIA officials in a sub-office of United Nations. CIA authorities had given a special device to Dr. Afridi, through which he was in contact with an undercover woman agent in US Embassy.
