The crack team of Navy Seals who launched the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan were always planning to kill him, it has emerged.
There was "never any question" the al Qaeda chief would be captured alive, according to a special operations officer who spoke to The New Yorker magazine.
This conflicts with claims by the Obama administration that the world's most wanted man would have been allowed to live if he had "conspicuously surrendered".
In the first detailed account of the mission, details of the exact moment the international terrorist was killed were also revealed.
"Geronimo" was the word picked to illustrate when he had been located in the compound in Abbottabad where he had been hiding out for years.
Two Black Hawk helicopters flew to Pakistan in secret carrying two dozen Navy Seals and a sniffer dog for the mission in May this year.
The Seals had already killed the terror boss's courier and unarmed wife and Bin Laden's son Khalid before they found him hiding upstairs.�
Two of Bin Laden's other wives attempting to shield him. One shouted in Arabic and apparently made as if to charge so was shot in the leg.
The Navy Seal who fired feared the women might be wearing suicide bomb vests and stepped forward to wrap them in a hug to block any blast but they were unarmed.
Bin Laden himself also did not have a weapon and the team seized their chance.
The unnamed officer told the New Yorker: "There was never any question of detaining or capturing him. It wasn't a split-second decision. No-one wanted detainees."
He was first shot in the chest and fell backwards. A second bullet entered his head above his left eye.
On his radio, the Seal declared: "For God and country - Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo." He then added: "Geronomio E.K.I.A (enemy killed in action)."
Back in the White House, where they had been watching the entire raid, Barack Obama said: "We got him."
Other details revealed in the article included "Crankshaft", the name given to the operation to kill Bin Laden. The specific raid was dubbed Operation Neptune's Spear.
The Seals had earlier spent five days practising in dense forest in North Carolina using a replica forest and another week in Nevada.
When they returned to Jalalabad with Bin Laden's body, it was checked by Vice Admiral Bill McRaven and the CIA station chief.
A doctor took two bone marrow samples and some DNA swabs. Photos were also taken of his face and the full corpse before it was flown to Bagram.
The US checked with Saudi intelligence to see if they wanted the body before burying it at sea to avoid any grave becoming a shrine.
Mr Obama later met all the Seals who were involved but he never asked who had fired the shot that killed Bin Laden, not was the information volunteered.
Source: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/bin-laden-raid-always-shoot-kill-092344962.html
No comments:
Post a Comment