Image Source : AP (FILE) Osama bin Laden, one of many world’s most needed terrorists.
Islamabad: Former Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has revealed that the United States had shared its apprehensions of most needed Al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden hiding within the nation earlier than American CIA troops killed him in Abbottabad in 2011. Gilani, who served as Pakistan’s PM from 2008 to 2012, mentioned the data was shared by former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
In an interview, the 71-year-old Gilani mentioned he dismissed Rice’s apprehensions of bin Laden hiding in Pakistan as “disinformation”. Rice visited Pakistan 4 occasions, and through one such go to, she met the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chief in December 2008 following a go to to New Delhi after the 26/11 Mumbai assaults. “Condoleezza Rice had visited Pakistan and her apprehensions were that he (bin Laden) was in Pakistan,” Gilani mentioned on Thursday.
Osama bin Laden, one of many world’s most infamous terrorist leaders chargeable for the devastating 9/11 assaults that killed over 3,000 individuals in America, was killed by US Navy Seals in a stealth operation on May 2, 2011 underneath the presidency of Barack Obama. The 54-year-old Saudi-born militant chief was hiding within the Pakistani garrison metropolis of Abbottabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Gilani mentioned that bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan was an intelligence failure of the whole world, not simply Pakistan. “If they’d any proof they need to have given it to us. We would have helped them as a result of we had been towards terrorism and we had been preventing a struggle towards terrorism and misplaced many valuable lives of navy males and civilians who had been martyred and we additionally misplaced billions of {dollars},” he mentioned through the interview.
The former PM mentioned he used to get briefings on the terrorist’s presence in Pakistan and “they were very clear”, including that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and the Central Investigation Agency (CIA) cooperated intently to find the infamous terrorist and all high-value targets had been achieved.
Gilani was requested about his speech in Pakistan’s National Assembly, questioning bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan. He answered that Pakistan’s motive was to cease the worldwide media as a result of bin Laden was not a Pakistani citizen and got here from overseas.
Rice, 69, is an American educator and politician, who served because the nationwide safety adviser (2001–05) and secretary of state (2005–09) to US President George W Bush. She is the present director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza was killed in a US counter-terrorism operation within the Afghanistan-Pakistan area in 2019, mentioned then-US President Donald Trump. Bin Laden’s loss of life was an sudden blow to Al-Qaida and their calculations in Afghanistan. Not solely Osama Bin Laden’s loss of life was a monetary and strategic blow to the terrorist organisation however he was additionally a face that symbolised terrorist actions.
(with inputs from PTI)
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Source: www.indiatvnews.com
