Pakistan is rattled by CNN-IBN's expose in which former Pakistani defence minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar has admitted that the top officials in the country knew about Osama bin Laden's presence and they sheltered the al Qaeda chief.
Former aide of ex Pakistani Army chief and dictator General Pervez Musharraf, Rashid Qureshi strongly asserted that the claims made by Chaudhary Mukhtar are wrong and that the former defence minister is lying.
"I cannot believe Mukhtar has said this, if this is true then there's something wrong with Mukhtar. The revelation comes as a shock to entire Pakistan but I do not and I have not heard Mukhtar saying that president of Pakistan knew where Osama bin Laden was before that operation was carried out to kill him," he said.
Chaudhary Ahmed Mukthar was the defence minister of Pakistan between 2008 and 2012. He was part of the top five ministers in the cabinet of the then prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. A long time member of the Pakistan People's Party, Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar had the ear of his boss, President Asif Ali Zardari.
It is for the first time, four and a half years after the killing of Osama Bin Laden, that an insider has revealed a truth that Pakistan deliberately and carefully hid from the rest of the world.
Here's why this is important. Contrast the admission by the then Pakistan defence minister to all the official reactions of Pakistani authorities in the immediate aftermath of Osama's killing.
"I categorically deny any role, any assistance from any Pak official or establishment. The way he hid himself, we could not identify him," Rehman Malik, the then interior minister, had said on May 10, 2011.
Musharraf had maintained a similar stand. "As far as I am concerned, I am 500% sure that I did not know, whether anyone believes it or not. So I am clear there is no complicity. And I am also clear that army and ISI could not have hidden it from me. Because I am from them and they are from me," he had said on October 27, 2011.
Pakistan continues to hold the same position to this day, a denial, the art of which has been perfected by Pakistan's state institutions. Now the then Pakistan Defence Minister has blown the lid out of this denial as to why this narrative was not countered.
Question: So when this story happened and it's been a little over four years since that earth shattering event happened, why is it that this impression has gone to the rest of the world that it's only the Americans who knew about it, this operation was in complete stealth and the Pakistani authorities were completely in the dark?
Answer: If you are trying to get hold of a gentleman who has been hiding away in the mountains for more than 15-18 years, then these kind of people are difficult to be found and once you find them they normally don't live after that. They attempt committing suicide. They would attempt to finish off their bodies by just killing themselves. I don't know why he didn't run away himself?
So the Pakistanis were all along simply hoping that Osama, if found, would just kill himself, like most terrorists do.
Listen to it once again. On the record. The then Defence Minister of Pakistan saying they knew about the presence of the world's most wanted man, less than a 100 kilometres from Pakistan's capital Islamabad.
Question: Did this word spread above in the chain of command, did the President know about it, did the Prime Minister know about it? At what level was this information shared?
Answer: The people who were part and parcel of the whole action like the President of Pakistan, the Armed Forces Chief, the joint chief of Staff and the agency people they were all activated and they were all waiting for orders for them to come out with their teams and provide all the information which they should have done earlier.
Question: So President Zardari you are saying knew about it, General Kayani, the then Army Chief had information about it and there were people both in the civilian and military chain of command who had prior information about Osama?
Answer: Yeah
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