Pakistani Military Investigates How Bin Laden Was Able to Hide in Plain View

ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani military has taken charge of investigations into the circumstances that allowed Osama bin Laden to reside quietly in a three-story house on the edge of this town, officials here said. Military intelligence investigators returned to the house on Wednesday and spent most of the day working inside the compound, while the army and the police barred journalists and others from approaching the area.

The walled-off property in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was killed early Monday has become the object of curiosity. Investigators spent Wednesday inside the house.

The intelligence agencies have detained at least 11 people for questioning, including an immediate neighbor who once worked with the family and the construction manager who built the house, Pakistani news organizations reported.

They have also taken into custody the bodies of four people killed when an American Navy Seals team made an air assault on the house early Monday.

Three women and nine children found in the house after the raid are also in the custody of the intelligence services, Pakistani security officials said. At least two are related to Bin Laden, one security official said: a 12- or 13-year-old daughter and his wife, who was shot in the leg but has received hospital care and is out of danger. He spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with the rules of his agency.

The national daily newspaper The News published a photograph that it said was the photo page of the passport of Bin Laden’s wife. The passport was from the Republic of Yemen and pictured a woman in a black head scarf named Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, born March 29, 1987, making her 24 years old, about 30 years younger than Bin Laden.

Asked about the validity of the passport, the security official said he could not confirm whether it was connected to anyone detained after the raid.

Officials are still investigating the identity of the four people whose bodies were found inside the compound after the Seals team departed with Bin Laden’s body. The bodies included two brothers and a son of Bin Laden, the security official said. American officials have said the fourth person killed was a woman, while the Pakistani official said the fourth was an unknown man.

The two brothers were known as Arshad Khan, the owner of the house, and Tareq Khan. Neighbors say they were either brothers or cousins. Preliminary investigations have made officials suspect that these were not their real names and that they were living under fake identities.

Arshad Khan was carrying an old, noncomputerized Pakistani national identity card, which said he was from Khat Kuruna, a village in Tangi district, near Charsadda in northwestern Pakistan. Yet officials have found that there is no record of an Arshad Khan in Khat Kuruna.

Pakistan introduced computerized identity cards a few years ago to cut down on the production of fraudulent identity cards, many of them bought by Afghan refugees, among others.

American officials said that Arshad Khan was the local alias of the trusted courier who led them to Bin Laden and who was known inside Al Qaeda as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. They describe him as a Pakistani who was brought up in Kuwait, hence the suffix to his name, and say that he was a close protégé of two senior figures in Al Qaeda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi, who were both arrested in Pakistani cities before being handed over to United States custody.

The men and the compound do seem to have on occasion drawn the attention of intelligence agencies. Both Afghan and Pakistani officials have said they had pointed out the compound as one of interest to C.I.A. officials in previous years.

Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, told the BBC that officials had indicated it as suspicious in 2009, and as a possible hide-out for Bin Laden, although there were “millions” of other suspected locations.

An Afghan intelligence official told Agence-France Presse that Afghan intelligence pinpointed the compound last August, but that officials thought a senior Taliban commander, Maulavi Abdul Kabir, was living there.

“The house that Osama bin Laden was killed in was pinpointed for the first time by Afghan intelligence,” the official told the news agency, which said the official declined to be named because of the delicacy of the issue.

Afghan agents living in an old refugee camp in the nearby town of Haripur carried out surveillance of the house, he said.

He said that Afghan intelligence’s information about the house “was shared with the Americans and they showed lots of interest,” but that Afghan spies had not been involved in the subsequent investigations or operation, the news agency reported.

 

Taliban Prison Break May Lead to Military and Political Setback

The plan for the prison break , which led the prisoners through a tunnel dug over more than five months and equipped with electricity and air pipes, was so closely held that one young Taliban fighter who got out said he knew nothing of it until a fellow inmate tugged his sleeve to wake him in the night and led him to the three-foot-wide tunnel, which ran more than half a mile from a hole in a cell’s floor, under security posts, tall concrete walls and a highway, and came up in a nearby house. From there, a waiting car took the fighter a few miles away, where he hailed a taxi to safety.

“I was just praying to God that he would free me,” said the fighter, Allah Mohammed Agha, 22, recounting his escape from Sarposa Prison, where he had been held for 28 days. “Last night was the night that my dream was made true.” He spoke by phone from Spinbaldak, near the Pakistani border.

The Afghan government called the breach a disaster. The breach called into question the extent of the gains made against the Taliban in 18 months of hard fighting in Kandahar Province, and whether any progress would be sustainable once NATO troops began to reduce their numbers as planned this summer, members of Parliament, tribal leaders and Western officials said in interviews.

Some worried that the jailbreak might strengthen the Taliban in the coming weeks as the spring fighting season began. Having so many fighters back in circulation — possibly including hard-core commanders — also threatened to undermine efforts to bring Taliban fighters over to the government side, Afghan officials and former Taliban said.

There is no doubt that the incident demonstrated the ability of the Taliban to organize such an elaborate operation, even after they were driven largely underground in Kandahar and Helmand Provinces, and despite police and prison guards, prison visits by NATO mentors, and sophisticated NATO surveillance in Kandahar.

The prison break comes after four recent attacks by the Taliban, in which they used suicide bombers, often disguised as police officers or soldiers, to penetrate secure buildings, including an Afghan army corps’ headquarters in Laghman Province and the Ministry of Defense headquarters in the capital, Kabul.

Members of Parliament and others were scathing about the lapses. Some questioned whether the prison guards or police officers were bribed not to notice the tunnel’s construction.

“It’s a big achievement for the Taliban and shows a big failure and weakness in the government,” said Muhammad Naiem Lalay Hamidzai, a Parliament member from Kandahar and chairman of the internal security committee.

“The Taliban gain two things from this jailbreak,” he said. “First, coming after the incidents in Kunduz, Laghman, Kandahar and at the Ministry of Defense headquarters, it sends a message that they can do whatever they want, even at the heart of the most secure and important jail, and it allows them to strengthen their ranks with more manpower.”

The Afghan government was reeling Monday as details of the escape emerged. “This is bad news for the government and the people of Afghanistan,” the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, Waheed Omar, said at a news conference. “This shows a vulnerability on the part of the government.” He called the prison break a disaster.

One unexplained question was why the cells where prisoners were supposed to sleep were left open so that they could make their way to the cell with the tunnel. It also seemed that none of the guards checked on the prisoners during the night, even though Afghan intelligence officials and Western military officials said that there had been intelligence about the possibility of a security breach.

“This is absolutely the fault of the ignorance of the security forces,” said the Kandahar provincial governor, Tooryalai Wesa. “This was not the work of a day, a week or a month of activities. This was actually months of work they spent to dig and free their men.”

Clearly embarrassed, Afghan officials had little else to say, other than to acknowledge that the prison break showed unexpected weaknesses in security. Since the Taliban engineered a major break at the same prison in 2008 — freeing 1,200 prisoners — Canadian forces have mentored the Afghans who run the prison and NATO countries have spent several million dollars upgrading and training the prison administration, according to a Western official in Kabul.

“There are a lot of people asking questions today,” said a NATO officer at the coalition’s headquarters in Kabul.

There was no official comment from the NATO command. Two Western officials described the break as “at least partially an inside job,” but both said they could not be named because of the delicacy of the situation.

Of the 488 men who escaped, fewer than 20 were from the criminal section of the prison; the rest were security detainees believed to be Taliban fighters and commanders.

An escapee, who asked not to be identified, said that among those freed were two shadow governors and 14 shadow district governors. The Taliban have a shadow government that has varying influence in different provinces.

However, Muhammad Qasim Hashimzai, a deputy justice minister, said that the government did not yet know who had escaped. “The detainees included all kinds of people,” he said, and he promised to have more information on Tuesday.

Mr. Wesa, the Kandahar provincial governor, said a manhunt was on and that 26 escapees had been captured by late afternoon.

The security section of the prison was eerily empty on Monday when reporters were shown around. Prisoners’ belongings were strewn about, but appeared heaped in the cell with the tunnel in an effort to obscure the entrance. A second tunnel branched off to the criminal side of the prison, according to the warden, Gen. Ghulam Dastagir Mayar, and Mr. Wesa.

Now, with so many Taliban back in the fight, it will be even harder to convince Taliban fighters that they will be safe if they defect to the government, a former Taliban commander said.

“The prison break will slow down the peace process,” said Mullah Noorul Aziz Agha, a Taliban member who recently decided to lay down his arms and work with the government. “I was talking to Taliban on the phone to try to persuade them to come over, but now with this, how can we promise them that we can offer them security and protection?”

Taimoor Shah reported from Kandahar, and Alissa J. Rubin from Kabul, Afghanistan. Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul.

 

Libya Could Become Stalemate, Top U.S. Military Officer Says

The officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that a month of airstrikes had destroyed 30 percent to 40 percent of the capabilities of the military forces loyal to Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but had not yet drastically tilted the conflict with opposition militias one way or another. He cited shifts in tactics by Libyan forces that made it difficult for NATO warplanes to distinguish them from the rebel fighters and civilians.

“So it’s become a much more difficult fight, much more difficult targets,” Admiral Mullen said in Baghdad, where he visited American troops involved in another American war. “As I have observed in recent days, essentially it’s very much stalemate-like in the vicinity of Ajdabiya and Brega,” two contested cities east of the capital, Tripoli.

His remarks were echoed by those of the most prominent American yet to visit the rebel strongholds in Libya: Senator John McCain. Appearing on Friday in Benghazi, he, too, used the word stalemate as he called on the United States to intensify its attacks on pro-Qaddafi forces, using aircraft like A-10 jets and AC-130 gunships that the White House and Pentagon have pulled from the fight, citing the threat from portable missiles on the ground and saying allied warplanes should take the lead.

Mr. McCain, a strong advocate of intervention in Libya, called for the United States to recognize the rebels’ governing council as the country’s legitimate government, as France, Italy and Qatar have done, and provide it with money and arms on a scale similar to what the United States did in support of those who fought the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

“I have met these brave fighters, and they are not Al Qaeda,” said Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona. “They are Libyan patriots who want to liberate their nation.” His comments came after a brief visit that included meetings with the members of the Transitional National Council, led by a former justice minister, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, and a former interior minister, Abdul Fateh Younes, who both defected when the uprising began in February.

Mr. McCain’s visit, though coordinated with the White House and the State Department, nonetheless underscored a mounting sense of frustration among critics and even some supporters of the Obama administration that it was not acting aggressively enough to help the rebels overthrow Colonel Qaddafi.

Although this week President Obama authorized the use of armed drones in Libya and a $25 million contribution of nonlethal military surplus for the rebel forces, the administration resists deepening the American military involvement. Asked on Thursday whether American soldiers or advisers should be sent to help improve the effectiveness of the rebel forces, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Mr. Obama had explicitly ruled that out. “And there is no wiggle room in that,” he said.

Instead, administration officials have pleaded for patience. They said that while it could take weeks or months for the rebels to mature as fighters, they asserted that the operation continued to weaken Colonel Qaddafi’s military and that sanctions and an arms embargo allowed the United States “quite aggressively, both unilaterally and multilaterally, to put the squeeze on Qaddafi,” as the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, put it on Friday.

“I think it’s important to remember that Qaddafi’s resources are limited,” Mr. Carney told reporters returning with the president to Washington from California. “And the arms embargo and the sanctions that have been put in place will, as each day goes by, make it harder and harder for him to function and for his regime to function.”

Military officials said the greatest shortcoming among the ragtag rebel militias was not weapons but training, communications systems and a sensible command structure. The supplies the United States is sending — including uniforms, body armor and nonclassified communications gear — are suited to building a more effective fighting force. With the anticipated arrival in Libya of liaison officers from France, Italy and Britain, officials expressed hope that the rebels would become better organized and coordinate their battlefield movements more effectively.

Even so, Admiral Mullen and other NATO officials acknowledged that an evolving tactic adopted by pro-Qaddafi forces — hiding among the population and moving about the battlefield in civilian vehicles — had vastly complicated NATO’s attempts to locate, identify and attack government troops, armor and artillery.

The use of armed Predator drones is intended to counter that. Those drones, though, will operate only on the frontlines separating the rebels and the government forces, with the justification of protecting civilians in besieged cities like Misurata. As of late Friday, no Predators had yet attacked Libyan government forces, officials said.

A senior administration official acknowledged that the fierce fighting in Misurata in particular called into question whether the NATO campaign was succeeding in protecting civilians. “There are constraints on doing that because of the stated desire to avoid civilian casualties, the technical limits of air power and even the weather,” the official said.

Overall, though, the NATO campaign was never intended, by itself, to overthrow Colonel Qaddafi. The measure of success, the official added, is “not whether the rebels are marching on Tripoli.”

The fighting in Misurata seesawed Friday.

The rebels there said they had driven Colonel Qaddafi’s men from buildings along Tripoli Avenue, a central artery, where snipers had been shooting at anyone who dared venture out. Shooting resumed later, though, near the main hospital, not far from Tripoli Avenue, according to a foreign journalist at the hospital, suggesting that whatever success the rebels had enjoyed was probably short-lived. The Libyan flag, which had been taken down the day before, was once again flying over the city’s tallest building.

Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, said the army might stop fighting in Misurata because of NATO airstrikes, Reuters reported. Instead, he said, local tribes will try to negotiate with the rebels, and if that fails, the tribes will fight the rebels, the news agency reported.

In Benghazi, the rebels seemed buoyed by the news from the front and from Mr. McCain’s visit. He stopped briefly at the courthouse that has been the headquarters of the uprising’s leaders. Only a few dozen Libyans were there, and they chanted pro-American and anti-Qaddafi slogans.

“This,” Mr. McCain said, “was one of the most exciting and inspiring days of my life.”

Rod Nordland reported from Benghazi, and Steven Lee Myers from Washington. Reporting was contributed by C. J. Chivers from Benghazi, Michael S. Schmidt from Baghdad, Thom Shanker from Washington, Alan Cowell from London and J. David Goodman from New York.

 

France Joins Britain in Sending Military Advisers to Libya Rebels, Reports Say

PARIS — The French government said Wednesday it would join Britain in sending a small number of military liaison officers to support the ragtag rebel army in Libya, news reports said, offering a diplomatic boost for the insurgent leader Mustafa Abdel-Jalil who planned to meet with President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.

The French and British decisions to send advisers marked the latest development in the international community’s search for a means to break a bloody battlefield deadlock that has killed hundreds in the contested cities of Misurata and Ajdabiya and left the rebels in tenuous control of a few major coastal cities in their campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi

But the moves, likened by some critics to America’s decision to send military advisers to Vietnam, raised worries in both countries that their military establishments were being drawn closer into the conflict. The French government spokesman, Fran?ois Baroin, told reporters on Wednesday that the number of military liaison officers would be small, but did not give details. French government ministers stressed that they do not plan to send ground troops to support the rebels.

William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said on Tuesday that the British advisers would help the makeshift rebel forces “improve their military organizational structures, communications and logistics.”

Britain and France — the European nations at the forefront of the diplomatic drive against Colonel Qaddafi — have strived to maintain a united front since they promoted a United Nations Security Council resolution almost five weeks ago authorizing NATO air strikes to protect civilians from loyalist forces.

France’s foreign minister, Alain Juppé, told reporters in Paris on Tuesday that he remained “absolutely opposed to a deployment of troops on the ground, “ words echoed on Wednesday by the defense minister, Gérard Longuet, who said the Security Council resolution permitting air strikes did not authorize the use of foreign ground forces.

On Wednesday, nonetheless, the satirical and investigative French weekly, Canard Encha?né, reported that, along with Britain and the United States, France dispatched covert special forces to Libya three weeks to assess the impact of allied airstrikes.

The Libyan government criticized the British decision to send advisers , saying the move would prolong conflict. Instead, Libya’s foreign minister, Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, used a BBC interview broadcast on Wednesday to renew the Tripoli authorities’ frequent call for a cease-fire and a suspension of NATO bombing to permit a settlement negotiated by Libyans themselves without foreign interference.

“We think any military presence is a step backwards,” Mr. Obeidi said, “and we are sure that if this bombing stopped and there is a real cease-fire we could have a dialogue among all Libyans about what they want — democracy, political reform, constitution, election. This could not be done with what is going on now.”

President Sarkozy of France met Mr. Abdel-Jalil, formerly Colonel Qaddafi’s justice minister, to try to find a means to break the deadlock and, according to a statement from the French presidency, to debate “the process of democratic transition.

The French prime minister, Fran?ois Fillon, who also planned to meet Mr. Abdel-Jalil, was quoted in news reports as saying France would intensify air strikes “to prevent Qaddafi forces from pursuing their attacks on civilian populations.”

“But at the same time, we will need to find a political solution, that is, conditions for a dialogue so that the Libyan crisis can be resolved,” he said in Kiev, Ukraine, according to Agence France-Presse.

Libya’s state television reported on Wednesday that NATO warplanes had struck telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure. But it did not say where or when the reported attacks took place.

The Libyan rebel leader held talks on Tuesday in Rome with Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, and urged NATO to increase its airstrikes against Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. But, publicly at least, he appeared to have secured no firm commitment of increased military aid similar to Britain’s offer.

Italy, France and Qatar are the only countries to formally recognize the rebel administration in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Britain had previously been providing what Mr. Hague described as “nonlethal assistance,” in the form of telecommunications equipment and body armor. He maintained that the new deployment fell within the United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the international community to protect Libyan civilians but ruling out an occupation force. The military team will work with British diplomats who are already in Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital, he said.

The officers will be deployed “quickly,” said Britain’s Defense Ministry, but it declined to provide further details on the timeline or the number of soldiers. The Associated Press reported that there could be as many as 20.

A government official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorized to discuss operational matters, said that though some of the soldiers had special forces backgrounds, they were not directly drawn from Britain’s elite Special Air Service and Special Boat Service teams.

The move was cause for concern among some current and former politicians. Sir Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, which is now part of a governing coalition with the Conservatives, said Tuesday that the advisers “must not be seen as a first installment of further military deployment.” He added, “Vietnam began with an American president sending military advisers.”

Current members of Parliament have also called for a fresh debate. “This is clear evidence of mission creep,” said John Baron, a Conservative member. “Now we are beginning to put military personnel on the ground, something that wasn’t even discussed when we debated this issue.”

Allied bombing sorties and Tomahawk missiles have failed to tip the balance decisively in favor of a rebel group with disjointed leadership, limited weapons and many inexperienced fighters. And civilian casualties have continued to mount. On Tuesday, the United Nations said that at least 20 children had been killed in the siege of Misurata.

Alan Cowell reported from Paris, and Ravi Somaiya from London. Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.

 

Thorny Issues Surround Military Terror Tribunal at Guantanamo

 Peter Fedynsky | New York ?April 15, 2011

Attorney General Eric Holder gestures during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, where he announced plans to try avowed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged henchmen before a military commission, April 4, 2011

The Obama Administration recently reversed a decision about the trial venue for alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He and four alleged co-conspirators now face justice in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, not a civilian federal court on the U.S. mainland. There is controversy over how the decision was reached and its possible legal ramifications.

Attorney General Eric Holder said earlier this month that he opposes a military tribunal for Mohammed. But Holder said he finally agreed to a military tribunal only reluctantly because of Congressional resistance to a federal civilian trial.

“I know this case in a way that members of Congress do not. I've looked at the files. I've spoken to the prosecutors. I know the tactical concerns that have to go into this decision, so do I know better than them? Yes. I respect their ability to disagree, but I think they should respect the fact that this is an executive branch function,” said Holder.

In January, lawmakers passed a law prohibiting the use of federal funds to transfer defendants from Guantanamo to the United States. Holder acquiesced, saying the administration cannot allow further delay of the trial, because family members of 9/11 victims have waited nearly a decade for justice.

Alexander Santora, is the father of firefighter Christopher Santora, who perished in the 9/11 attacks. "We should be in the sentencing stage, we should have been in the sentencing stage when they shut it down, and here we are starting from square one. It just boggles my mind," he said.

Critics say a military tribunal could actually delay justice. Hina Shamsi, Director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said military tribunals have lower standards that do not meet U.S. constitutional and due process requirements. ?

“Because they have lesser protections with respect to admission of secret evidence, admission of hearsay evidence, and in some circumstances evidence that has been obtained through coercion, they’re going to be challenged on structural and evidentiary grounds as well,” said Shamsi.

Defendants convicted in military trials have the right of appeal, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The process can take many years.

Annemarie McAvoy, adjunct law professor at Fordham University, said certain civilian due process procedures are not feasible in terror trials. One is the constitutional right to a speedy trial.

“In the United States, you have a right to an attorney. How can you get an attorney to Afghanistan on a battlefield within an hour or a day? You can’t. Especially an attorney who is familiar with whatever the process is in the United States and who can speak the particular language that that person speaks,”?? she said.

McAvoy adds that unlike civilian trials, military tribunals can present evidence without the suspect knowing how it was obtained in order to protect intelligence sources.

“In the United States, the problem is, you also have a right to all of the information without any sort of filter for whether it’s national security information or not, which means that in the U.S. system, on our grounds, that could really hurt us,” said McAvoy.

McAvoy said a terror trial in New York also exposes the city to additional risks of attack. Shamsi disagrees.

“Hundreds of terrorism cases have been tried in the federal courts without posing undue risk to American security," Shamsi said. "In fact, it’s the kind of risk that the American judicial system and security system knows well how to address, as shown by the fact that these trials have taken place.”

Adding to McAvoy’s concerns about security issues are complaints by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg about the city's cost of securing the trial.? Shamsi counters that Guantanamo exacts a price, nonetheless, by damaging America’s global image, because President Obama promised to close the controversial facility. ?

These are some of the thorny issues underpinning the trial of Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators. Holder said it was unclear whether the suspects could be sentenced to death if they pleaded guilty in military court.

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