Osama Bin Laden, then the leader of Al Qaeda, on the night of May 1, 2011, was killed by an operation conducted by the United States under the orders of Obama, then the president of the United States and it was enormous news for the whole world.
Now recently, a new thing came into the picture, Leon Panetta, Ex-CIA chief and former American defense secretary has said that the US didn’t inform Pakistan about the location of Osama bin Laden just due to past experiences and lack of trust. The past experience of tipping done by Pakistan to the terrorists just after information was shared with Islamabad.
Panetta, in an interview also said it is “difficult for him to believe” that there was no one in Pakistan who was aware of Laden’s Abbottabad compound.
Panetta further told that “when we clearly discovered the location of this compound in Pakistan, it was found to be in a place called Abbottabad, considered as a center for their intelligence and secret services and the West Point of Pakistan is also located there,”.
The military academy of the US is located in New York’s West Point.
This compound was three times the size of other compounds, it had 18-foot walls on one side and 12-foot walls on the other side with barbed wire around it said Panetta, who was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director when the raid was carried out.
“I find it very difficult to believe that there wasn’t somebody in Pakistan who was aware of this compound,” he said.
Panetta said, after the US discovered that compound, we had to make a decision whether we should share this location-related information with Pakistan or not, and at that time President Barack Obama made the decision on the basis that whenever we share any information with Pakistan, with any extent of secrecy about any terrorist, his location, it gets tipped off and suddenly the terrorist always manage to disappear, Panetta said.
We chose not to inform the Pakistanis about the location of Osama Bin Laden and the task we were about to accomplish just because of that concern and that lack of trust, very frankly, we were concerned that if we did that it could be possible that Laden would be advised to move,” he further said.
