Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda chief, was unarmed and had already died with a bullet in the brain when the US Navy commandos entered his bedroom during a raid in Pakistan’s Abbottabad city, a US Navy SEAL has revealed in a book.
Giving a firsthand account of last May’s raid, the SEAL who also participated in it, has disclosed that Osama had been fatally wounded before they entered the room.
As the SEALS ascended a narrow staircase, the team’s point man saw a man poking his head from a doorway, wrote the SEAL using a pseudonym Mark Owen (whose real identity has since been revealed by Fox News) in “No Easy Day,” a copy of which was obtained at a bookstore by The Huffington Post.
“We were less than five steps from getting to the top when I heard suppressed shots. BOP. BOP,” writes Owen.
“I couldn’t tell from my position if the rounds hit the target or not. The man disappeared into the dark room.”
Contrary to media reports that Osama had a weapon and resisted when Navy SEALs entered the room, he was unarmed, writes Owen.
Team members took their time entering the room, where they saw the women wailing over Osama, according to the book. “Blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull” and he was still twitching and convulsing, Owen writes.
While Osama was in his death throes, Owen writes he and another SEAL “trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless.”
Then the SEALS repeatedly examined his face to make sure he was truly the al-Qaeda chief. They interrogated a young girl and one of the women, wailing over his body, who verified that it was Osama.
Contrary to earlier accounts, Owen says SEALs weren’t fired upon while they were outside the gate of the compound. There was no 40-minute firefight.
Owen also writes that during a meeting with top commanders, a lawyer from either the Pentagon or the White House “made it clear that this wasn’t an assassination’. He recounted the instructions: “I am not going to tell you how to do your job. What we’re saying is if he does not pose a threat, you will detain him.”