Abbottabad operation: Did Malik know of raid 15 minutes after it began?

Interior Minister told Al-Arabiya he ‘knew’ but disowned the statement hours after .

DUBAI:

While most civil and military officials say they were caught off-guard by the May 2 operation by US commandos in Abbottabad, Interior Minister Rehman Malik made a startling revelation: He became aware of the raid 15 minutes after it had begun.

“I was made aware of the operation 15 minutes after it had begun,” he told Al-Arabiya television in an interview. However, Malik added that he was also unaware of the target.

The minister told the channel that he was first informed that “one of two drones involved in the operation had crashed.”

Malik later Monday told reporters outside parliament in Islamabad that he believed it was a “drone attack” because Pakistan did not have helicopters with night vision.

However, in a verbal somersault he disowned the statement saying that he was “misquoted” in the Arab media.

“I said I came to know there was a helicopter crash within 15 minutes. I asked relevant authorities and directed the concerned police official to go to the spot and check since we don’t have night vision helicopters, so maybe it was a drone strike,” he told the media outside the Parliament House in Islamabad.

“I was informed by the concerned police official two and half hours later that the army had taken control after the helicopter crashed.”

Helicopter-borne US commandos carried out a raid lasting less than 40 minutes, killed Bin Laden and took away his body from a compound near a military training facility in Abbottabad on May 2.

However, one of the US helicopters crashed and was destroyed by US Navy SEALs before they left in other aircraft.

Malik in his interview with Al-Arabiya stressed there was “permanent cooperation in the security field” between Islamabad and Washington, despite US concerns about the reliability of their key ally in the “war on terror.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 10^th, 2011.