Islamabad: An official assessment by the US on the presence of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan’s Abbottabad town has concluded that Islamabad did not know the whereabouts of the Al Qaeda chief before the US raid, a top US military official has said.
The May 1, 2011, raid on Osama’s compound in Abbottabad was personally supervised by Admiral William McRaven, head of the US Special Operations Command, the Dawn reported.
The US military official told CBS executive editor Charlie Rose that Pakistan was not informed of the raid because the initial assumption was “How could they not know he was there?”
A report by the American Forces Press Service quoted McRaven as saying at a meeting in Washington that he too believed informing Pakistan about the raid in advance would have put the mission at risk.
McRaven has now said he believes the Pakistani government did not know about Osama’s whereabouts.
“We have no intelligence that indicates the Pakistanis knew he was there,” the Dawn quoted him as saying.
McRaven said there was never a moment he doubted the raid would succeed.
“We hand-picked the guys. They were the best of the best, all across the board. They had extensive combat experience, and consequently, I was very confident,” he said.
Asked why Pakistan was not informed about the raid, he said: “We didn’t trust them because we didn’t share the mission with them.”
“Yeah, again, not my decision, but I would have voted for the decision that was made because it was just too risky to bring them in because part of the thinking was, how could they not know he was there? But everything afterwards indicates that they just didn’t know he was there. He was hiding in plain sight,” McRaven said. (IANS)
