‘Bin Laden commanded al Qaeda from hideout’

Pentagon releases video clips of al Qaeda chief seized from the compound.

WASHINGTON DC:

Contrary to initial perceptions that Osama bin Laden was dormant and inactive while in hiding, a senior US intelligence official on Saturday claimed that the al Qaeda chief was still closely involved in the terror group’s activities while in Pakistan.

Located close to Pakistan military installations, the compound in Abbottabad where US forces killed Bin Laden was an “active command and control centre” where the al Qaeda leader retained strategic, operational and tactical direction of the group, said the US intelligence official.

The official said information recovered from the raid on Bin Laden’s compound represented the largest trove of intelligence ever obtained from a single terrorism suspect.

“This compound in Abbottabad was an active command and control centre for al Qaeda’s top leader and it’s clear ... that he was not just a strategic thinker for the group,” the official said. “He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions.”

The official released five video clips of Bin Laden captured from the compound, most of them showing the al Qaeda leader evidently rehearsing for some of the videotape messages he occasionally distributed to his followers.

The first was a previously unreleased message from bin Laden directed to the United States that was believed to have been filmed between October 9 and November 5, 2010. In the video, he appears to have dyed his beard black.

The second video, however, showed a grey-bearded Bin Laden wrapped in a blanket and apparently wearing a ski cap while reviewing video images of himself in different settings.

It was not clear where the videos had been taped, but an initial assessment indicated one clip in front of an armoire may have been recorded at the compound.

The remaining three videos appear to be practice sessions, possibly for the first video.

This footage is among the trove of evidence found after the United States raid on the compound.

Commenting on the operation, Leon Panetta, the chief of the CIA, said in a statement that the effort that traced Bin Laden to the compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad also showed the CIA’s “perseverance, skill and sheer courage”, adding that, “The material found in the compound only further confirms how important it was to go after Bin Laden.”

“The materials reviewed over the past several days clearly show that Bin Laden remained an active leader in al Qaeda, providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group,” the official said. “He was far from a figurehead. He was an active player, making the recent operation even more essential for our nation’s security.”

The cache of electronic and handwritten materials obtained by the US Navy SEALs includes numerous hallmark al Qaeda plots including attacks on infrastructure targets such as water supply and transportation including rail and air, in what one official described as a “strategic guide for how to attack the US”

British media reports claimed on Saturday that clues about the whereabouts of al Qaeda no 2 had also been found from the trove of information seized from the compound. But US officials have refused to confirm or deny the claims.

Yet it is unclear just how active Bin Laden was in coordinating any operations or in blessing overall strategies and plots. One official said Bin Laden appears to have thought of himself as something of a head coach to al Qaeda.



Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2011.