Musharraf’s Book Indicated Abbottabad As Possible OBL Hideout
On May 5, I wrote this article about the mystery of how the U.S. did not locate Osama Bin Laden’s hideout earlier. Abu Farraj al-Libbi, the former #3-man of Al-Qaeda, told his Gitmo interrogators that he and his family fled to Abbottabad in 2003 and then left. Al-Libbi, according to his own testimony, was in charge of finding safehouses for Bin Laden. It is puzzling why satellites (apparently) didn’t monitor Abbottabad and notice this compound.
This article adds to the mystery. In former Pakistani President Musharraf’s book, he writes that his security services tried to capture Al-Qaeda leaders in Abbottabad twice in 2004 after three safehouses were detected. Someone “very important” was set to meet “someone important in Al-Qaeda living in a house there.” He says his men killed the visitor but that he was a “decoy.”
Musharraf was in office until August 2008. Bin Laden’s compound was built in 2005. He had to have known about his presence there or at least that it was being used by a High Value Target. Did Musharraf put this story in his book to exonerate himself should Bin Laden be found?
