Osama bin Laden, the founder and former leader of al-Qaeda, went into hiding following the start of the War in Afghanistan in order to avoid capture by the United States for his role in the September 11 attacks, and having been on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since 1999. After evading capture at the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, his whereabouts became unclear, and various rumours about his health, continued role in al-Qaeda, and location were circulated. Bin Laden also released several video and audio recordings during this time. In the decade following his disappearance, there were many attempts made by the United States government to locate bin Laden. In December 2009, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal said that bin Laden would need to be "captured or killed" in order for the U.S. to "finally defeat al-Qaeda." American intelligence officials discovered the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden by tracking one of his couriers. Information was collected from Guantánamo Bay detainees, who gave intelligence officers the courier's pseudonym as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. In 2009, U.S. officials discovered that al-Kuwaiti lived in Abbottābad, Pakistan. CIA paramilitary operatives located al-Kuwaiti in August 2010 and followed him back to the Abbottabad compound, which led them to speculate it was bin Laden's location. On May 1, 2011, United States Navy SEALs of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) carried out an assault on the compound on orders from U.S. President Barack Obama. During a 40-minute raid, bin Laden was killed in the pre-dawn hours of May 2 by one bullet above the left eye and another to the chest. The SEALs overpowered the compound's remaining residents, killing several, and extracted bin Laden's body (which was subsequently buried at sea) as well as computer hard drives, documents, and other material.

Bin Laden's whereabouts in the mid-2000s

New information of bin Laden's location had been emerging since his death and the arrest of his wives. On the day of the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden was at the Khaldan terrorist training camp near Khost, which he left during the night with several Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives after sending his wives and children away across the Durand Line into Pakistan to hide out. Bin Laden arrived the following morning in Khandahar and lived in a Taliban-controlled safe house from September 12 to October 6, 2001. Shortly after the US-led war in Afghanistan began, bin Laden traveled from Kandahar to Kabul where he lived in another Taliban safe house until November 12 when he was believed to have traveled to Jalalabad where he spent at least five days in another safe house. From Jalalabad, he traveled to the Tora Bora region in the White Mountains where he hid out from November 17 to December 12. He is believed to have crossed the border into Pakistan sometime in January 2002 and spent time in various Al Qaeda safehouses in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan between January and April 2002. According to one of his wives, bin Laden was reunited with his family for the first time after the 9/11 attacks in the second half of 2002 in Peshawar, the capital city of the Tribal Areas, where they lived for five months in another safe house. After this, in September 2002, bin Laden took his family into the rural mountain areas of northwest Pakistan (and very notably, not in the tribal belt where main US attention was focused). First they stayed in the Shangla district in the Swat valley, where they stayed in two safe houses for eight to nine months. In May 2003, bin Laden and his family moved to Haripur, a small town close to Islamabad, where they stayed in a rented house for two years. In June 2005, bin Laden and his family moved to Abbottabad.

Location and killing of Osama bin Laden

Tracking

American intelligence officials discovered the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden by tracking one of his couriers. Information was collected from Guantánamo Bay detainees, who gave intelligence officers the courier's pseudonym as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, and said that he was a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In 2007, U.S. officials discovered the courier's real name and, in 2009, that he lived in Abbottabad, Pakistan. CIA paramilitary operatives located al-Kuwaiti in August 2010 and followed him back to the Abbottabad compound, which led them to speculate it was bin Laden's location. Using satellite photos and intelligence reports, the CIA inferred the identities of the inhabitants of the compound. In September 2010, the CIA concluded that the compound was "custom built to hide someone of significance" and that bin Laden's residence there was very likely. Officials surmised that he was living there with his youngest wife.

Identification attempt

To identify the occupants of the compound, the CIA worked with doctor Shakil Afridi to organize a fake vaccination program. Nurses gained entry to the residence to vaccinate the children and extract DNA, which could be compared to a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010. It is unclear if the DNA samples were ever obtained.

Location

Built between 2003 and 2005, the three-story mansion was located in a compound about 4 km (2.5 mi.) northeast of the center of Abbottabad. While the compound was assessed by US officials at a value of US$1 million, local real-estate agents assess the property value at US$250,000. On a lot about eight times the size of nearby houses, it was surrounded by 12 to 18 ft concrete walls topped with barbed wire. There were two security gates and the third-floor balcony had a 7 ft privacy wall. There was no Internet or telephone service coming into the compound. Its residents burned their trash, unlike their neighbors, who simply set it out for collection. The compound is located at 34.16928°N, 73.24259°W, 1.3 km southwest of the closest point of the sprawling Pakistan Military Academy. President Obama met with his national security advisors on March 14, 2011, in the first of five security meetings over six weeks. On April 29, at 8:20 a.m., Obama convened with National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John O. Brennan, and other security advisors in the Diplomatic Room, where he authorized a raid of the Abbottabad compound. The government of Pakistan was not informed of this decision.

Killing of Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden was killed after being shot in the head and chest, during Operation Neptune Spear, with Geronimo as the code word for bin Laden's capture or death. The operation was a 40-minute raid by members of the United States special operations forces and Navy SEALs on his safe house in Bilal Town, Abbottabad, Pakistan. It took place on May 2, 2011, around 01:00 Pakistan Standard Time (May 1, 20:00 UTC). U.S. forces then took his body to a military base in Afghanistan for identification before burying it at sea. Following his death new details of where he lived were learned from interrogations of his widows and surviving associates. According to the Associated Press reports based on interrogations, it was determined that he had lived in five different safehouses in Pakistan. His penultimate home was located in Haripur. It was a relatively upscale house in a neighborhood that contained other upscale homes but also bordered Afghan refugee huts. He lived there for eleven months while the Abbottabad compound was being built.

Pakistan's alleged role

Critics have accused Pakistan's military and security establishment of protecting bin Laden. Most believe bin Laden lived at the compound for at least six years before his death there. On March 29, 2012, Pakistani newspaper Dawn acquired a report produced by Pakistani security officials, based on interrogation of his three surviving wives, that detailed his movements while living underground in Pakistan. Declan Walsh, writing in the New York Times, reported on speculation that Pakistan was planning to charge bin Laden's wives and adult daughters with immigration offenses, rather than simply deporting them, so they would be in prison and unable to offer details of Pakistani cooperation with bin Laden to neighboring country India and its intelligence agency RAW.

Rumors and speculation about his whereabouts: 2001–2011

Bin Laden's location and state of health were a continuing topic of speculation since his disappearance from Tora Bora. It has become clear that most of these rumors and speculation were not based on fact. First, rumors surfaced that bin Laden was killed or fatally injured during U.S. bombardments, most notably near Tora Bora, or that he died of natural causes. According to Gary Berntsen, in his 2005 book, Jawbreaker, a number of al-Qaeda detainees later confirmed that bin Laden had escaped Tora Bora into Pakistan via an eastern route through snow-covered mountains in the area of Parachinar, Pakistan. The media reported that bin Laden suffered from a kidney disorder requiring him to have access to advanced medical facilities, possibly kidney dialysis. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second-in-command and a close bin Laden associate, is a physician and may have provided medical care to bin Laden. Between 2002 and 2011, the most common suggestion from U.S. national security officials and others was that "their best intelligence suggested that bin Laden was living along the mountainous, ungoverned border of Pakistan and Afghanistan," such as in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (an area that includes Waziristan) or volatile regions in North-West Frontier Province (now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), where an ongoing insurgency has taken place. Several experts and former officials expressed surprise when bin Laden was instead revealed to have been hiding in the urban city of Abbottabad. Less common suggestions were that bin Laden had died (either by illness or military attack), or that he was alive and living in countries other than Pakistan, such as Afghanistan or Iran.

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