Pakistani Military Faces Scrutiny as Unfolding Evidence Suggests Direct Role in Harboring bin Laden
Numerous questions have been raised on how Osama bin Laden could have been living in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad just down the street from Pakistan's premier military academy. CIA Director Leon Panetta has reportedly said Pakistan was either "knowledgeable or incompetent" when it came to bin Laden's whereabouts. Some evidence has emerged to indicate that the Pakistani military may have had a direct role in harboring bin Laden. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government is claiming it warned U.S. intelligence two years ago about the compound where bin Laden was killed.
One journalist that has been reporting from Abbottabad is Graeme Smith, an award-winning foreign correspondent for The Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada. He is in Abbottabad investigating the mystery behind the bin Laden compound. Democracy Now! interviewed him May 5.
VIDEO & MORE:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/democracy-now/was-osama-bin-laden-livin_b_858181.htmlTRANSCRIPT:
DEMOCRACY NOW
...................
(snippets)
Some evidence has emerged to indicate that the Pakistani military may have had a direct role in harboring bin Laden. The journalist Steve Coll, who has written extensively on the bin Laden family, reports that local maps show land near the bin Laden compound as "restricted areas," indicating that they were under military control. Coll writes that the initial circumstantial evidence suggests, quote, "that bin Laden was effectively being housed under Pakistani state control.".........what’s interesting is that all along the way, you know, there would have opportunity to check. One guy who has built 25 homes in Bilal Town, which is—he’s a contractor who works in the area, said that, you know, typically, your ID would be checked about seven times along the way. And what also struck me was that,
in that area—it was built on military land, which is not unusual. There’s a lot of suburban development on military land in Pakistan. But in those areas, your application to build something has to be reviewed by a cantonment board, which is chaired by a serving colonel in the Pakistani military. And so, it really does seem like bin Laden was living for years right under their noses and, you know, that these checks and balances were either missed or overlooked.
.......
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/5/pakistani_military_faces_scrutiny_as_unfolding