Timothy Horrigan; May 2, 2011
The place where Osama bin Laden was shot and killed on May 1, 20011 (the eighth anniversary of the "Mission Accomplished" speech) by Navy SEALs has been described as "deep within Pakistan." This makes it sound very remote: however, he was actually killed in the picturesque resort town of Abbotabad, a short drive from the capital city of Islamabad. His compound may have been at the end of a dead-end road, but it was also in a bustling suburban neighborhood, just off a major highway, and it was literally around the corner from the Pakistan Military Academy, which is Pakistan's equivalent to West Point. Clearly, the Pakistani military establishment knew he was there although it's not shocking that they never ratted him out to their ostensible American allies.
The first reports of the raid (although these reports went out several hours before anyone knew what was going on) were tweets by a Twitter user named @ReallyVirtual (aka Sohaib Athar) who owns a small software company and lives and works in the neighborhood. He commented rather casually about the racket in his neighborhood for a few minutes around 1 a.m. local time, not yet knowing what it was all about.
In American terms, it is as if Fidel Castro vanished for 10 or 20 years and turned up on Reservoir Road in Hanover, New Hampshire.
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See
Also:
May 8, 2011 New York Times article: "Bin Laden's Secret Life in a Diminished World"
May 2, 2011 New York Times article: "How Osama bin Laden Was Located and Killed"
President Obama's speech & White House press briefing; May 1, 2011
