Bin Laden relatives killed in UK plane crash

YATELEY, United Kingdom -- Members of Osama bin Laden's family were among four people killed when a private jet crashed into a car auction lot in Britain, Saudi Arabia's embassy in London and British police said Saturday.

While the embassy did not identify the dead, a source close to the family speaking to AFP and Saudi media indicated that they were bin Laden's stepmother Raja Hashim, his sister Sanaa, the sister's husband Zuhair Hashem, and a Jordanian pilot.

The Saudi-registered Phenom 300 jet came down on Friday as it tried to land at Blackbushe Airport, a small airfield in Hampshire, southern England.

The police have launched an investigation into what caused the crash alongside the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB).

The Saudi ambassador "offered his condolences to the sons of the late Mohammed bin Laden and their relations for the grave incident of the crash of the plane carrying members of the family," a statement posted on the embassy's Twitter account said.

The embassy also said it would work with British authorities to investigate the incident and repatriate the bodies for burial in Saudi Arabia.

A police spokesman confirmed that three passengers and the pilot had died.

"We do believe three of the deceased to be the mother, sister and brother-in-law of the owner of the aircraft, all of whom are from the Bin Laden family, but formal post-mortem examinations are ongoing," the spokesman said.

"They were Saudi Arabian nationals and visiting the UK on vacation," he said.

- 'Big column of smoke' -

Osama bin Laden, the leader of the Al-Qaeda militant network and the man behind the 9/11 attacks, was killed by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011.

His father Mohammed, a construction magnate with 54 children, died in a plane crash in Saudi Arabia in 1967.

Footage of the aftermath of Friday's crash showed plumes of black smoke rising into the sky and several cars on fire in the outdoor area of British Car Auctions, where vehicles were parked awaiting sale.

On its website, Blackbushe Airport says it "provides some of the finest executive and private aviation facilities anywhere in the UK".

Robert Belcher, a local plane enthusiast who witnessed the aftermath of the crash, said the jet had been a "regular visitor" to the airport in recent months.

"I was passing the airport on my way home and there was a big column of smoke in the air," he said.

"I could see the plume of smoke waving from about five miles (eight kilometres) away and was hoping it was just a car fire rather than an aircraft accident."

Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said in a statement Friday that the plane was registered in the Gulf state and that it would work with British investigators to determine the cause of the crash.

British media reported that the aircraft had taken off from Milan's Malpensa airport in Italy.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Who shot bin Laden? Former US Navy SEALS make rival claims

WASHINGTON - Members of the U.S. Navy Seal commando team that killed Osama bin Laden at his Pakistan hideout in May, 2011 are making conflicting claims as to who actually shot the al Qaeda leader.

The Washington Post published a story on Thursday quoting Rob O'Neill, a former SEAL, as claiming to have fired the fatal shot that hit bin Laden in the forehead after O'Neill stormed into a room in bin Laden's house in Abbottabad.

The claim by O'Neill, who travels the country giving motivational speeches, was countered by a source close to another SEAL team member.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the team member told him the fatal shot was fired by one of two other men who entered the room before O'Neill.

The Post said O'Neill acknowledged shots were fired at bin Laden by at least two other Seal team members, including Matt Bissonnette, a former Seal who wrote a 2012 book about the raid entitled "No Easy Day."

The book did not identify the person who shot bin Laden.

NBC News quoted Bissonnette on Thursday as saying: "Two different people telling two different stories for two different reasons ... Whatever he (O'Neill) says, he says. I don't want to touch that."

Last year, after Esquire Magazine published an interview with an anonymous SEAL member, now widely reported to have been O'Neill, who claimed to have shot bin Laden, other media outlets questioned the account.

An article entitled "Who really killed bin Laden," by Peter Bergen, a CNN analyst and al Qaeda expert, quoted a then-serving SEAL team member saying the story as presented by Esquire was "complete B.S."

A representative of a speaker's organization which says it represents O'Neill said he was unavailable to comment. O'Neill's page on the website of the organization describes his career as a SEAL, but makes no mention of a role in killing bin Laden.

Bissonnette's lawyer, Robert Luskin, acknowledged Thursday that Bissonnette for some time had been under criminal investigation by both the Naval Criminal Investigation Service and the Justice Department for possible violations of a U.S. espionage law because he did not seek official clearance before publishing his book.

Bissonnette denies wrongdoing.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Bin Laden's life on the run revealed by Pakistani inquiry

ISLAMABAD - Osama bin Laden lived in plain sight for almost a decade and was once even pulled over for speeding but not apprehended, thanks to the incompetence of Pakistan's intelligence and security services, an official report into his killing said on Monday.

The report, leaked to Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera which circulated it late on Monday, offers fascinating details about life on the run for the world's most wanted man, who, it says, wore a cowboy hat to avoid being spotted from above.

Written by a judge-led commission that the Pakistani government set up shortly after U.S. special forces killed bin Laden in 2011, the 336-page report is based on interviews with 201 sources including members of his family and various officials.

In one testimony showing how close bin Laden came to being captured, "Maryam", the wife of one of his most trusted aides, recounted how his car was stopped by Pakistani police in the Swat region.

"Once when they were all ... on a visit to the bazaar they were stopped for speeding by a policeman," the report says. "But her (Maryam's) husband quickly settled the matter with the policeman and they drove on."

To avoid detection from the sky, bin Laden took to wearing a cowboy hat when moving about his compound in the city of Abbottabad, his wives told investigators.

The inquiry's findings - which have not yet been officially published - include evidence of incompetence at almost every level of Pakistan's security apparatus. The report is also fiercely critical of the "illegal manner" in which the United States conducted the raid.

It chastises Pakistan's leadership for failing to detect CIA activities on its soil, and does not rule out the involvement of rogue elements within the Pakistani intelligence service - a sensitive issue even to touch on in a high-profile inquiry.

"The U.S. acted like a criminal thug," says the report by the Abbottabad Commission.

"But above all, the tragedy refers to the comprehensive failure of Pakistan to detect the presence of OBL (Osama bin Laden) on its territory for almost a decade or to discern the direction of U.S. policy towards Pakistan that culminated in the avoidable humiliation of the people of Pakistan."

CULPABLE NEGLIGENCE

After a decade-long hunt, the CIA finally tracked down the al Qaeda leader to a compound within sight of an elite Pakistani military academy in Abbottabad, close to the capital Islamabad.

In a night-time mission by U.S. Navy SEALs, bin Laden was killed on May 2 that year in an episode that humiliated Pakistan's military and strained relations between the strategic allies Washington and Islamabad.

"As for (failing to detect) the CIA network, there was culpable negligence and incompetence," the report says.

"Although the possibility of some degree of connivance inside or outside the government cannot be entirely discounted, no individual can be identified as guilty of connivance."

Pakistan's government and security officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Bin Laden's network killed nearly 3,000 people when al Qaeda hijackers crashed commercial planes into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside Washington and a field in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

Some U.S. officials have voiced suspicions that Pakistan's intelligence agencies sheltered bin Laden, but Pakistan has dismissed the idea.

LIFE ON THE RUN

The report offers insights into the dramatic night of his death and paints a picture of a restless and paranoid man who often hit the road to avoid being caught.

Bin Laden arrived in Pakistan in the spring or summer of 2002, the report says, at one point spending two years in Haripur before moving to the Abbottabad compound with his big family in August 2005.

"All the places in Pakistan where OBL stayed are not fully known," the report says. "But it included FATA (South Waziristan and Bajaur), Peshawar, Swat and Haripur."

It found that he probably crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan's Tora Bora area, where U.S. forces were hunting him, sometime in 2002. His family moved from Afghanistan's Kandahar to Karachi shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"They kept a very low profile and lived extremely frugally. They never exposed themselves to public view. They had minimum security," the report says.

"OBL successfully minimized any 'signature' of his presence. His minimal support group blended easily with the surrounding community ... His wives, children and grandchildren hardly ever emerged from the places where they stayed. No one ever visited them, not even trusted al Qaeda members."

His wives, in their testimonies, said bin Laden was not fond of personal possessions and had very few clothes.

"Before coming to Abbottabad he had just three pairs of shalwar kameez (traditional dress) for summer, and three pairs for winter," the report says.

"Whenever OBL felt unwell (unofficial U.S. accounts indicate he suffered from Addison's disease), he treated himself with traditional Arab medicine ... and whenever he felt sluggish he would take some chocolate with an apple."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Obama, Romney in 14-day sprint to election

U.S. President Obama and Mitt Romney begin a 14-day dash to Election Day Tuesday after a final debate in which each called the other remiss in an unsafe world.

Obama was to deliver remarks at campaign events in Delray Beach, Fla., and Dayton, Ohio. Vice President Joe Biden was to join him in Dayton.

Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, and running mate Paul Ryan were to speak at campaign events in Henderson, Nev., and Morrison, Colo.

Those states are considered swing states, or battleground states, where neither Obama nor Romney has overwhelming support.

The Monday night debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., focused on foreign policy, but both candidates used their time to talk about domestic issues, including jobs, the economy and the budget. They also talked about the U.S. auto-industry bailout, school-class sizes and Romney's tax plan.

On foreign policy, Obama accused Romney of offering policies on the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere that were "all over the map."

"I know you haven't been in a position to actually execute foreign policy, but every time you've offered an opinion, you've been wrong," Obama said.

Romney countered that he didn't "see our influence growing around the world -- I see our influence receding, in part because of the failure of the president to deal with our economic challenges at home."

He congratulated Obama for the 2011 raid that killed al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, "But we can't kill our way out of this mess."

He said the Obama administration lacks "a comprehensive strategy" to diminish radicalism in the Middle East.

At one point, when Romney complained the U.S. Navy was "smaller now than any time since 1917," Obama said: "We also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater -- nuclear submarines.

"And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we're counting slips," Obama said.

He criticized Romney for once saying Russia was the biggest geopolitical foe facing the United States.

"The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years," Obama said.

source: upi.com

Obama: bin Laden raid most important day in White House

WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama described the lonely decision he made to kill Osama bin Laden and called the daring Navy SEAL raid a year ago the "most important single day" of his tenure.

In an interview to be broadcast later Wednesday, Obama related the anxious moments as he watched the operation, the cloak of secrecy that enveloped it and the moment he saw a photo of the dead Al-Qaeda leader.

"I did choose the risk," Obama told NBC News anchor Brian Williams, in the latest episode of a nearly week-long commemoration of the bin Laden killing, and attempts by his reelection campaign to use it to bolster his standing.

Obama spoke about how the operation was planned and conducted in utmost secrecy, and how he did not share knowledge of it with many of his staff, or even First Lady Michelle Obama.

"Even a breath of this in the press could have chased bin Laden away," Obama said. "We didn't know at that point whether there might be underground tunnels coming out of that compound that would allow him to escape," he said.

Other top officials told how Obama solicited final recommendations about the operation, before going away to make a final decision himself on whether to move on bin Laden's suspect hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

"It was never contentious because I think everybody understood both the pros and cons of the action," Obama said.

"People who were advocating action understood that if this did not work, if we proved to be wrong, there would be severe geopolitical consequences.

"Most importantly, we might be putting our brave Navy SEALs in danger."

The president said he collected the conflicting recommendations of his war cabinet before going back to the White House residence to have dinner with his family and retire to his study.

"Well, there is no doubt that you don't sleep as much that evening as you do on a normal night," he said. "I stayed up late and I woke up early."

The next day, he told his subordinates that he had decided to go ahead with the raid.

"You have some serenity in knowing that you've made the best possible decision that you can and, you know, in that situation you just, you do some praying," Obama said. — Agence France Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Osama Bin Laden Dead

President Obama confirmed that Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in a firefight Sunday through a secretive U.S. operation inside Pakistan, Obama said in a speech at the White House. Osama bin Laden's body is in U.S. custody.

Osama bin Laden is the mastermind behind Al-Qaida and September 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed thousands of Americans.


President Obama says no Americans were hurt in the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. The President also said 'Justice has been done', by an emotional announcement at the White House.

Cheering crowds gather at the White House and Times Square in New York to cheer and celebrate.