Humiliated ISI’s ‘good, but not God’ excuse following Osama’s discovery in Abbottabad
May 5th, 2011 - 1:15 pm ICT by ANI
Islamabad, May 5(ANI): Pakistan’s premier spy agency Inter Services Intelligence is “good, but not God,” an ISI official has said, following the huge embarrassment faced by the agency in the wake of elusive Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s discovery in a luxury compound right under the nose of the Pakistan Military Academy.
The Saudi-born terrorist, who had evaded capture for a decade, was killed Sunday night in a top secret operation involving a small team of US Special Forces in Abbottabad city, located 50 kilometres northeast of Islamabad and 150 kilometres east of Peshawar.
The ISI official told the BBC in Islamabad that the compound in Abbottabad was raided when under construction in 2003. It was believed an al-Qaeda operative, Abu Faraj al-Libi, was there.
But since then, “the compound was not on our radar, it is an embarrassment for the ISI”, The News quoted the official, as saying.
“We’re good, but we’re not God,” the official added.
The ISI officer argued that the failure to get bin Laden should not tarnish the spy agency’s track record for last ten years.
“This one failure should not make us look totally incompetent. Look at our track record. For the last 10 years, we have captured Taliban and al-Qaeda in their hundreds - more than any other countries put together,” he stated.
The official also gave differing accounts of some of the events of Sunday’s raid, saying that there were 17 or 18 people in the compound at the time of the attack, and the Americans took away one person still alive, possibly a son of Bin Laden.
Those who survived the attack included a wife, a daughter and eight to nine other children, not apparently Bin Laden’s, and all had their hands tied by the Americans.
The surviving Yemeni wife said they had moved to the compound a few months ago, while Bin Laden’s daughter, aged 12 or 13, saw her father shot.
The official also said it was thought that the Americans wanted to take away the surviving women and children, but had to abandon the plan when one of the helicopters malfunctioned, and was destroyed by the Special Forces unit. (ANI)
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Tags: abbottabad, abu faraj, al libi, al qaeda, embarrassment, excuse, inter services, isi, islamabad, kilometres, last ten years, military academy, osama bin laden, pakistan military, peshawar, qaeda operative, special forces, spy agency, taliban, yemeni