US says Osama bin Laden unarmed when shot dead
Osama bin Laden was
unarmed when US special forces shot and killed him, the White House
said, as it tried to establish whether its ally Pakistan had helped the
al Qaeda leader elude a worldwide manhunt.
Pakistan faced
national embarrassment, a leading Islamabad newspaper said, in how to
explain that the world’s most-wanted man was able to live for years in
the military garrison town of Abbottabad, just north of the capital.
Islamabad vehemently denies it gave shelter to bin Laden.
“There is an
intelligence failure of the whole world, not just Pakistan alone,”
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters in Paris. “(If there
are) … lapses from the Pakistan side, that means there are lapses
from the whole world.” The revelation that bin Laden was unarmed
contradicted an earlier US account that he had participated in a
firefight with the helicopter-borne American commandos.
Al Arabiya television went further, suggesting the architect of the 9/11 attacks was first taken prisoner and then shot.
“A security source
in the Pakistani security quoted the daughter of Osama bin Laden that
the leader of al Qaeda was not killed inside his house, but had been
arrested and was killed later,” the Arabic television station said.
White House
spokesman Jay Carney on Tuesday cited the “fog of war” – a phrase
suggested by a reporter – as a reason for the initial misinformation.
Bin Laden’s killing
and the swift burial of his body at sea have produced some criticism in
the Muslim world and accusations Washington acted outside international
law.
“The Americans
behaved in the same way as bin Laden: with treachery and baseness,”
Husayn al-Sawaf, 25-year-old playwright said in Cairo. “They should’ve
tried him in a court. As for his burial, that’s not Islamic. He
should’ve been buried in soil.”
But there has been
no sign of mass protests or violent reaction on the streets in South
Asia or the Middle East, where Islamist militancy appears to have been
eclipsed by pro-democracy movements sweeping the region.
Washington will
weigh sensitivities in the Muslim world when it decides whether to
release photographs of bin Laden’s body which could provide proof for
skeptics of his death.
Bin Laden was shot
in the head. “It’s fair to say that it’s a gruesome photograph,” Carney
said. “I’ll be candid. There are sensitivities here in terms of the
appropriateness of releasing photographs.”
Pakistan has
welcomed bin Laden’s death, but its foreign ministry expressed deep
concerns about the raid, which it called an “unauthorized unilateral
action.”
The CIA said it
kept Pakistan out of the loop because it feared bin Laden would be
tipped off, highlighting the depth of mistrust between the two supposed
allies.
US helicopters
carrying the commandos used radar “blind spots” in the hilly terrain
along the Afghan border to enter Pakistani airspace undetected in the
early hours of Monday.
The Pakistani
newspaper Dawn compared the latest humiliation with the admission in
2004 that one of the country’s top scientists had sold its nuclear
secrets. “Not since Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed to transferring nuclear
technology to Iran and Libya has Pakistan suffered such an
embarrassment,” it said.
The streets around
bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad remained sealed off on Wednesday,
with police and soldiers allowing only residents to pass through.
“It’s a crime but
what choice are you left with if I’m not handing over your enemy who is
hiding in my house?” said Hussain Khan, a retired government official
living nearby, when asked about the apparent violation of Pakistan’s
sovereignty. “Obviously you will go and get him yourself.”
Unarmed resistance
Carney insisted bin Laden resisted when U.S. forces stormed his compound in the 40-minute operation. He would not say how.
“There was concern
that bin Laden would oppose the capture operation and, indeed, he
resisted,” Carney said. “A woman … bin Laden’s wife, rushed the US
assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then
shot and killed. He was not armed.”
