The death of Osama bin Laden

Pakistani police cordon off a street beside Osama Bin Laden's final hideout after US special forces killed the Al Qaeda leader in May 02, 2011. (AFP/ File photo)
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Updated 25 May 2020
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The death of Osama bin Laden

Long before US special forces caught the world’s most-wanted man, our Southeast Asia  bureau chief interviewed him

Summary

On May 2, 2011, a US special forces team stormed a walled compound in the northeastern Pakistani city of Abbottabad and shot dead Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda.

The operation, carried out in the early hours of the morning, brought an end to a 10-year hunt for the world’s most-wanted terrorist, responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the US in 2001 and numerous other terrorist outrages.

The following day, an Arab News editorial celebrated the “lifting of a curse” on the Muslim world. Bin Laden and his “twisted version of Islam,” declared the paper, had made the religion “feared and despised among millions upon millions of people” and had been responsible for much of “the spreading tide of international Islamophobia.”

DUBAI: The tall, thin man wore a smoke-colored, ankle-length thobe and bright white turban, and held an AK-74 assault rifle close to his chest. As I stepped into the room and he moved forward and embraced me, the gravity of the moment finally dawned: I was face to face with Osama bin Laden, the most-wanted man in the world.

I had spent a good part of my career over the decades thinking and writing about Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda militant group that he had turned into a multinational enterprise for the export of militancy.

Key Dates

  • 1

    Osama bin Laden, son of a wealthy Saudi businessman, forms Al-Qaeda to support Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion.

    Timeline Image 1988

  • 2

    Saudi Arabia revokes bin Laden’s citizenship for his support of Islamic extremism.

  • 3

    Bin Laden issues a declaration of jihad, pledging to drive US forces from the Arabian Peninsula and overthrow the Saudi government.

  • 4

    Twin Al-Qaeda truck-bomb attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya leave 200 dead; the FBI places bin Laden on its most-wanted list.

    Timeline Image Aug. 7, 1998

  • 5

    Coordinated attacks on the US, masterminded by bin Laden, leave almost 3,000 dead.

    Timeline Image Sept. 11, 2001

  • 6

    Bin Laden escapes US attack on Al-Qaeda caves and tunnels in the Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

  • 7

    US Navy SEALs storm bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, shortly after 1 a.m. local time.

    Timeline Image May 2, 2011

Now here I was at his heavily guarded, mud-walled hideaway in southern Afghanistan on June 21, 2001 — less than three months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 would spread the names Al-Qaeda and its founder to every corner of the globe.

I was Asia correspondent with the London-based Middle East Broadcasting Center at the time and had received a phone call three months before inviting me to Afghanistan to meet Bin Laden. So, as we settled down on a mattress on the floor that summer afternoon, my first question was why he had granted me the interview and what message he wanted to send to the world through me.

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Moments earlier, Bin Laden had said he would be giving only “limited comments” as he was restrained from talking to the media by his hosts in Afghanistan, the Taliban, who rose to power in the war-ravaged nation largely on the strength of Bin Laden’s aid and, in turn, provided him refuge.

Instead, his aides in the room did much of the talking during the three-hour-long meeting. Notable among them were Mohammed Atif (alias Abu Hafs), Al-Qaeda’s military leader; Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who now heads what remains of the transnational militant group; and Othman, a man assigned to handle logistics for my interview and who identified himself only with a first name.

“President Obama said the remains had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom, which requires speedy burial, and the Pentagon later said the body was placed into the waters of the northern Arabian Sea after adhering to Islamic procedures — including washing the corpse — aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.”

From a front-page Arab News story by Azhar Masood

“In the coming weeks, there will be a big surprise; we are going to hit American and Israeli installations,” Abu Hafs said. “The coffin business will increase in the United States.”

I looked at Bin Laden and asked if this was true; he smiled and nodded.

In an interview with Pamela Constable for The Washington Post the following month, I would reiterate this: “They said there would be attacks against American and Israeli facilities within the next several weeks. I am 100 percent sure of this, and it was absolutely clear they had brought me there to hear this message.”

Two months later, the 9/11 attacks would prove that Bin Laden’s chilling message to me had, indeed, been true. 
When the interview ended, Bin Laden’s personal photographer snapped photos of us and filmed me with Al-Zawahiri and the Al-Qaeda founder, who said he would invite me to interview him again.




A page from the Arab News archive from May. 3, 2011.

“If something big happens, I will be hiding in the tribal areas of Pakistan,” Bin Laden said as he shook my hand and walked out of the room. “That’s where you can come again to interview me.”

A decade later, at 4 a.m. on May 2, 2011, I was at Islamabad airport ready to board a flight to Dubai when a journalist in Kabul texted, asking if I had heard rumors that Bin Laden had been killed in a US raid in Pakistan. A few hours earlier, a Pakistani journalist had sent me a text about a helicopter crash in the garrison city of Abbottabad.




The compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Photograph. (Reuters / File)

Suspecting that the two events might be connected and following my reporter’s instinct, I walked up to an airline representative and told him that I was a journalist and needed his help getting my luggage off the flight. The man got excited at the news that Bin Laden may be dead and led me by the hand back through immigration, telling other colleagues to help me because I had to cover one of the biggest stories in modern history.

From the airport, I left directly for Abbottabad, 50 km north of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, arriving there at 9 a.m. By then, a large group of excited journalists had gathered near the compound where Bin Laden had hidden for years, kept from entering by Pakistani soldiers standing guard.

“Now here I was at his heavily guarded, mud-walled hideaway in southern Afghanistan on June 21, 2001 — less than three months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Baker Atyani

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama confirmed that Bin Laden had been killed in a night raid by US forces in Abbottabad city, not far from the tribal regions where the militant leader had told me he would flee from Afghanistan. It was the end of a decade-long hunt for the man who had redefined the threat of terrorism for the 21st century.

To date, the US has disclosed few details of the raid. Only a small number of people — a handful of senior administration and military officials and the Navy SEALs who carried out the operation — were privy to the events of May 2, and the US government classified most of the documents relating to the raid. Questions also remain about the

Pakistani government’s role, if any, in allowing Bin Laden to hide in a compound within sight of an elite military academy.

As the years go by, I often think of that meeting at Bin Laden’s desert hideout and whether he could have predicted that after him, Al-Qaeda’s ranks would be hollowed out by relentless American attacks and the rise of Daesh. I also wonder what more he would have had to say if we had met again.

Indeed, in November 2001, barely two months after the 9/11 attacks, Othman, Bin Laden’s logistics aide, called to say “the person” was ready to meet me again.
“Will you come?” he asked.

I never got back to Othman and so my meeting with Bin Laden remains the last time before 9/11 that the Al-Qaeda founder is known to have met and given an interview to a journalist.

  • Baker Al-Atyani, head of Arab News’ Southeast Asia bureau, interviewed Osama bin Laden three months before the 9/11 attacks


Tajikistan to jail people for illegal electricity use

Updated 44 sec ago
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Tajikistan to jail people for illegal electricity use

  • Electricity consumption in Tajikistan is limited for about six months per year, as its outdated energy infrastructure struggles to keep up with rising demand

DUSHANBE: Tajikistan has introduced 10-year prison sentences for the illegal use of electricity, as a decades-long energy crisis caused by water shortages worsens in the poor Central Asian country.

Electricity consumption in Tajikistan is limited for about six months per year, as its outdated energy infrastructure struggles to keep up with rising demand.

The country’s Energy and Water Resources Ministry on Saturday announced measures to introduce “criminal liability for violations of regulations on the use of electricity.”

In a sign of how tightly the country controls the press and flow of information, it was only reported by independent media outlets on Monday.

Under the new rules, anybody found trying to disconnect or bypass an electricity meter will face up to 10 years in prison.

Ex-Soviet Tajikistan is ruled by President Emomali Rakhmon, a former state farm boss who has held power since 1992.

Justice Minister Rustam Shoemurod said earlier in April that those who alter meter readings or bypass them to avoid payments are “seriously damaging the country’s economic interests.”

A shortage of water needed to fuel hydroelectric plants, which generate about 95 percent of electricity output in Tajikistan, has led to years of regular power outages.


American trying to make contact with isolated tribe in India arrested

Updated 5 min 51 sec ago
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American trying to make contact with isolated tribe in India arrested

  • Polyakov was fascinated by the mystique of the Sentinelese people

NEW DELHI: Indian police have arrested a 24-year-old American YouTuber who visited an off-limits island in the Indian Ocean to try to make contact with an isolated tribe known for attacking intruders.

Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, from Scottsdale, Arizona, was arrested on March 31, two days after he set foot on the restricted territory of North Sentinel Island — part of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands — in a bid to meet people from the reclusive Sentinelese tribe, police said.

A local court last week sent Polyakov to a 14-day judicial custody and he is set to appear again in the court on April 17. The charges carry a possible sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine. Indian authorities said they had informed the US Embassy about the case.

Visitors are banned from traveling within 5 kilometers of the island, whose population has been isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years. The inhabitants use spears and bows and arrows to hunt the animals that roam the small, heavily forested island. Deeply suspicious of outsiders, they attack anyone who lands onto their beaches.

Police said Polyakov was guided by GPS navigation during his journey and surveyed the island with binoculars before landing. He stayed on the beach for about an hour, blowing whistle to attract the attention but got no response from the islanders.

He later left a can of Diet Coke and a coconut as an offering, made a video on his camera, and collected some sand samples before returning to his boat.

On his return he was spotted by local fishermen, who informed the authorities and Polyakov was arrested in Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago nearly 1,207 kilometers east of India’s mainland. A case was registered against him for violation of Indian laws that prohibit any outsider to interact with the islanders.

Police said Polyakov had conducted detailed research on sea conditions, tides and accessibility to the island before starting his journey.

“He planned meticulously over several days to visit the island and make a contact with the Sentinel tribe,” Senior Police Officer Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwal said.

An initial investigation revealed Polyakov had made two previous attempts, in October last year and January, to visit the islands, including in an inflatable kayak.

Police said Polyakov was drawn to the island due to his passion for adventure and extreme challenges, and was fascinated by the mystique of the Sentinelese people.

Survival International, a group that protects the rights of Indigenous peoples, said Polyakov’s attempted contact with the tribes of North Sentinel was “reckless and idiotic.”

“This person’s actions not only endangered his own life, they put the lives of the entire Sentinelese tribe at risk,” the group’s director Caroline Pearce said in a statement.


Children found malnourished in Greek migrant camp

Updated 07 April 2025
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Children found malnourished in Greek migrant camp

  • MSF doctors diagnosed six children from Syria and Afghanistan aged between six months and six years with acute malnutrition
  • EU-funded Samos camp, a sprawling, heavily-surveilled facility surrounded by barbed wire, was opened by the government in 2021

ATHENS: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Monday it had identified the first cases of malnourished children in a migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, which has been criticized by rights groups for dangerous living conditions.
MSF doctors have diagnosed six children from Syria and Afghanistan aged between six months and six years with acute malnutrition needing immediate help, it said.
While it could not say if their malnutrition was due to living in the camp, conditions there — including insufficient food and medical care — endangered their health, MSF said.
“No child should suffer from malnutrition due to systemic neglect,” said Christina Psarra, director general of MSF Greece, calling for immediate action and adding that about a quarter of the camp’s residents were children.
The Greek migration ministry said the cases were isolated.
“Under no circumstances is there generalized malnutrition due to living conditions,” the ministry said, adding that asylum-seekers were provided with three meals a day.
On the forefront of Europe’s 2015-16 migration crisis, Greece saw a surge in arrivals in 2024, according to UN data. This year, nearly a third of arrivals to southern Europe from the Middle East and Africa were to Greece.
The EU-funded Samos camp, a sprawling, heavily-surveilled facility surrounded by barbed wire, was opened by the government in 2021 to replace the former camp of Vathy — once an overcrowded, rat-infested tent city of 7,000 people.
The six malnourished children arrived this year, MSF said.
Rights group Amnesty International has called conditions at Samos “inhumane and degrading” during periods of overcrowding, with water shortages and a lack of other basic services.
In December, a UN human rights expert accused Greece of failing to identify victims of sex trafficking in the camp.
MSF called on Greece and the EU to ensure adequate pediatric care and nutritional support in Samos and to restore financial support to asylum seekers suspended last June.


Thousands of Bangladeshi students join global strike in solidarity with Gaza

Updated 07 April 2025
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Thousands of Bangladeshi students join global strike in solidarity with Gaza

  • Student leaders call for more action from international community, Bangladeshi government
  • Protest comes in wake of Israel’s new massacres, after unilaterally breaking Gaza ceasefire 

DHAKA: Thousands of Bangladeshi students took to the streets of Dhaka on Monday to call for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza, joining a global strike in solidarity with Palestine. 

The student protesters skipped classes and rallied in different parts of the capital throughout the day, with the biggest crowd gathering at Dhaka University, Bangladesh’s largest and oldest tertiary institution.

“We are observing today’s strike as part of a global solidarity call with the people of Palestine,” Mostafa Mushfiq, an anthropology student at Dhaka University, told Arab News. 

“We want to demonstrate to everyone that all students and people from different professions and classes are united against the mass killing in Gaza.”

The call for a global strike for Gaza comes after Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian group Hamas on March 18, launching a wave of deadly airstrikes that have since killed more than 1,300 people. 

Gaza’s Health Ministry estimates that at least 50,752 Palestinians have been confirmed dead and 115,475 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023. The real toll is likely to be much higher as thousands of people are missing under the rubble.

Monday’s strike and protests were joined by students from various universities across Bangladesh, many with the support of their lecturers and college administrators. 

“Our protests and struggles will continue … We are feeling a new spirit now. Our teachers are completely on our side in this movement,” Mushfiq said. 

Bangladeshi students have previously led other rallies in solidarity with Palestine, demanding more action from the international community to stop Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza.

“As a Bangladeshi, as a Muslim, it is my duty to be here to tell the world what is really going on, to let the Gaza people know that we are here, we hear them, we are praying for them,” Arafat Hossain Siam, a student from the Shanto-Mariam University in Dhaka, told Arab News.

“Don’t lose hope. Allah is watching. God willing, they will be free.”

The students were joined by ordinary Bangladeshis as they waved Palestinian flags, carried posters and chanted slogans in solidarity with Gaza. Some demanded that the Bangladeshi government do more. 

“We demand a strong stance from the Bangladeshi government on the issue of ongoing mass killing in Gaza,” Tahmid Hossain, a master’s student in Dhaka University, told Arab News. 

“The Palestinians are being suppressed for a long time. For around 100 years, we have noticed that day by day, aggression continues on the Palestinian land and their land is occupied by the Israelis … The Israeli attack on Gaza people, which began over a year ago, has crossed all the limits now.” 


King Charles III arrives in Rome on state visit, first overseas trip since brief hospitalization

Updated 07 April 2025
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King Charles III arrives in Rome on state visit, first overseas trip since brief hospitalization

  • Charles is traveling with Queen Camilla on the three-day visit, which includes the first address to the Italian Parliament of a British monarch
  • A planned meeting with Pope Francis was postponed by mutual agreement due to the pope’s bout with double pneumonia

ROME: King Charles III arrived in Rome on Monday for a state visit to Italy on his first overseas trip since being briefly hospitalized for side effects of cancer treatment.
Charles is traveling with Queen Camilla on the three-day visit, which includes the first address to the Italian Parliament of a British monarch, visits with the Italian president and premier and a side trip to Ravenna to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Adriatic city’s liberation by Allied forces.
A planned meeting with Pope Francis was postponed by mutual agreement due to the pope’s bout with double pneumonia. The 88-year-old pontiff returned to the Vatican two weeks ago, and made a surprise appearance to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday.
Charles, 76, was briefly hospitalized March 27 due to “temporary side effects” from treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer diagnosed more than a year ago. The king appeared the next day, waving to well-wishers in central London, and has since resumed scheduled engagements.
In Rome, Charles will highlight the close links between Britain and Italy, two NATO allies, at a time when European nations are working to bolster support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. The visit will include a joint flyover of Rome’s historic center by the Italian Air Force aerobatic team, Frecce Tricolori, or Tricolor Arrows, and their Royal Air Force counterparts, the Red Arrows.
The king and queen will attend a reception in Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, to mark the 80th anniversary of the region’s liberation from the Nazis by Allied forces on April 10, 1945. The royals will also celebrate the cuisine of the Emilia-Romagna region and meet with local farmers whose fields were devastated by floods that recently hit the area.