Nine years ago, on May 2, the most wanted terrorist in the world, Osama bin Laden, was killed. The founder and chapter of Al Qaeda is responsible for deadly attacks around the world. It is he who is blamed for the attack on the twin towers in the United States. According to the official version, bin Laden was eliminated, and the body was thrown into the sea, but the secret services themselves believed in such a denouement.
Osama bin Laden was born on March 10, 1957 in Riyadh. He studied at a secular school and went to university. As his mother Aliya Ghanem told in 2018, bin Laden liked to study. Under the influence of radical ideas, he fell precisely at the time of the university.
“People at the university changed him. He became a different person. He was a very good child, until he met some people who brainwashed him when he was just over 20. You can call it a sect, ” she said.
As a result, bin Laden became the founder and head of Al Qaeda, one of the largest international terrorist organizations. He stood behind such attacks as the explosion of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the explosions of four trains in Spain in 2004, the explosions in London in 2005.
The worst terrorist attack occurred on September 11, 2001. Then the terrorists hijacked four passenger aircraft, two of which were sent to the towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Both buildings collapsed, 2977 people died, another 24 were missing.
“Spear of Neptune”
Osama bin Laden has become the most wanted terrorist. The US authorities were really hunting and promised $ 25 million to those who have information about his whereabouts. In the winter of 2001, the Americans launched a military operation to capture the Islamist. They began to search for him in Afghanistan, but they could only find him after 10 years in Pakistan.
The operation, code-named “Spear of Neptune,” took place on the night of May 2, 2011. CIA officials believed that the terrorist conducts business through couriers. For several years, special services searched for one of the couriers, known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. They managed to follow him to bin Laden’s hideout.
Then came the analysis of satellite photographs. Experts figured out a three-story house in Abbottabad, which appeared on the maps in 2004. The building was located four kilometers from the city center. It was surrounded by a concrete fence with barbed wire. Interestingly, only 1.3 kilometers from this place was the Pakistan Military Academy.
NSA and CIA officers organized surveillance of the house, which lasted several months. The then president of the United States, Barack Obama personally discussed the plan for the special operation. And then he ordered the beginning. Preparations for the attack took place in the spring, and on the night of May 2, commandos blew up the walls of bin Laden’s shelter.
The terrorist was shot dead in his room. Three years later, former US Marine Corps officer Robert O’Neill told the press that it was he who shot Osama bin Laden in the head.
According to US officials, one of his wives identified the Islamist. A face recognition program and DNA analysis were also used. After identification, bin Laden’s body was buried in the Arabian Sea.
More questions than answers.
Many years have passed since bin Laden’s liquidation, but history is still shrouded in various riddles and inconsistencies. The official version of the elimination of the terrorist raises many questions among many conspiracy theorists.
US authorities said that the body was thrown into the water from a warship, but why then had it not been shown to anyone before that? Moreover, two weeks after the liquidation, the head of the command of the special operations of the US Armed Forces, Admiral William Macraven ordered to give all the CIA images or destroy them. As a result, no one saw the photos either.
Intelligence agencies generally voiced the version that bin Laden died after activating the “martyr’s belt.” Someone said that the associates killed the Islamist. Some claimed that bin Laden actually survived. Doubts are also caused by the fact that Abbottabad is located a thousand kilometers from the Arabian Sea.
The terrorist’s house itself was adjacent not only to the military academy, but also to other military facilities. There is also a military factory, which was well guarded. Moreover, the media reported the death of bin Laden before 2011. Thus, the Est Republicain newspaper, citing a secret report from the special services, wrote that the terrorist died of typhoid fever in Pakistan. Then this information was refuted, but the head of Iran’s intelligence, Heidar Moslehi, in 2011 spoke about the death of bin Laden from the disease “some time ago”.
All these assumptions formed the basis of many conspiracy theories. For example, Iranian politicians claimed that bin Laden worked for the United States and helped organize terrorist attacks.