AFTERALL, Al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, was not living a life of nomadic existence before he was killed by operatives of America’s SEALs. He was in fact actively controlling the terror network from his compound in Abbottabad, northern Pakistan, United States’ (U.S.) intelligence services’ officials revealed yesterday.

This revelation is coming as the U.S. released five videos of Bin Laden watching television and giving speeches.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Cable News Network and Associated Press (AP) reported yesterday that American officials said bin Laden was deeply involved in al-Qaeda decision-making.

“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,” an official who spoke on condition of anonymity told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.

“He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions,” the official said.

Also, as Afghan security forces battled Taliban insurgents for a second successive day inside the southern city of Kandahar, no fewer than 11 inmates and four police officers have died in a mutiny at a counter-terrorism prison in Baghdad.

The BBC reported that al-Qaeda leader, Huthaifa al-Batawi, accused of masterminding the deadly siege of a Baghdad church last October, reportedly led the revolt.

He grabbed an officer’s gun while being led to an interrogation and shot four policemen dead, including the head of the unit.

Five other officers were wounded in crossfire before Batawi was killed.

An interior ministry official told AFP news agency that Batawi was being taken to be interrogated about possible al-Qaeda plots in Iraq to avenge the death of Osama Bin Laden when he seized an officer’s gun.

He managed to free a group of other inmates before they attempted to break out of the prison in the Iraqi capital’s central Karrada district in the early hours of yesterday, said the official.

But the would-be escapees were killed by security reinforcements.

Brigadier General Moayed al-Saleh, head of counter-terrorism in Karrada district, was killed along with a lieutenant colonel and two first lieutenants, officials said.

Batawi was among 12 people arrested last November in connection with the siege of a Catholic Church in Karrada district on 31 October.

The five tapes, their sound removed by the Pentagon, show Bin Laden watching a report about himself on television, and, in several clips, practising video addresses.

One of the videos released was a “complete, yet unreleased” tape he described as “a message to the American people,” the intelligence official said.

It was believed to have been produced between early October and the beginning of November 2010.

Officials say that the changing colour of Bin Laden’s beard, dyed black in the addresses but grey when filmed watching himself on television, suggests he was someone who “jealously guarded” his image.

The materials found at the compound, which is reported to include digitial, audio and video files, as well as printed material, computer equipment, recording devices and hand-written documents, have been described by officials as “the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever”.

Personal letters between Bin Laden and others are also said to be among the documents recovered.

Of the five clips released by the Pentagon, and said by them to have been seized from bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, only one is truly remarkable. It appears to show an aged and frail Bin Laden squatting on the floor of a very basic room with jerry-rigged electrical wiring, watching television.

There is nothing glamorous about his surroundings, which resemble an urban squat. Yet a senior but unnamed US intelligence official has told journalists in Washington they now believe the compound raided by US Navy Seals last Monday was an al-Qaeda command and control centre.

Pakistani authorities still have three of Osama bin Laden’s wives and eight of his children in custody, nearly a week after the U.S. raid that killed the Saudi terrorist leader, and no countries have asked for their return, the government said Sunday.

Pakistan gained custody of bin Laden’s family members after the covert U.S. operation on May 2 that killed the al-Qaida chief and four others at his hide-out in the northwestern city of Abbottabad and further strained relations between the two nations.

Their questioning could provide more information on the U.S. military operation and help reveal how bin Laden was able to avoid capture nearly 10 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that set off a massive manhunt for him. Pakistani authorities, who were deeply embarrassed by the raid, are not allowing the CIA access to them, the Foreign Ministry said.

Today, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will brief parliament on the raid, which was carried out by two dozen U.S. Navy SEALs who helicoptered across the border from Afghanistan undetected and rappelled into the al-Qaida leader’s lair.

Pakistan’s army has said it had no idea bin Laden was hiding for up to six years in Abbottabad, an army town only two and a half hours’ drive from the capital, Islamabad. That claim has met with skepticism from U.S. officials, who have repeatedly criticized Pakistan for failing to crack down on Islamist militants.

Among bin Laden’s relatives taken into custody was his Yemeni-born wife Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah. She has told Pakistani investigators that she moved to the home in 2006 and never left the compound.

She is from the southern Yemeni province of Ibb, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) south of the capital, Sanaa. A family member there has sought a meeting with Pakistan’s ambassador to Yemen to ask about her fate and whether she is to return to Yemen. The relative, a cousin named Walid al-Sada, said the ambassador did not know and promised to get back to the family

-Guardian

Posted by admin on May 9 2011. Filed under Africa & World Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry