Osama Bin Laden: 5 Things We Still Don't Know About His Death

The Huffington Post UK  |  By Posted: 1/05/2012 05:49 Updated: 1/05/2012 07:58

One year ago Osama bin Laden was shot dead by US Navy Seals during a raid on his home in Pakistan.

His death has brought a range of information on the reclusive al-Qaeda leader to light, however there are still some key pieces of information left in the dark.

Where exactly was he buried?

Following the Navy SEAL mission to infiltrate Bin Laden's Abbottabad complex, his body was taken away by the American secret service and buried at sea. The American government insisted it had done this in order to prevent his burial site becoming a shrine, however the usual conspiracy theories came to rise.

Intelligence company Stratfor's emails, leaked by Wikileaks, seem to suggest that Bin Laden's burial location was not quite where we told. So exactly where is the terror chief’s final resting place?

Exactly what happened when he died?

The top secret operation conducted by Navy SEAL unit Seal Team Six to take down Osama Bin Laden has been described in articles, documentaries and diagrams but we still don't know exactly what happened when the al-Qaeda boss was killed. Did he go down fighting? Did he surrender?

How long was he in Pakistan?

The manhunt for the al-Qaeda leader lasted close to ten years – his hiding skill became a decade-long-joke. Chased through Afghanistan's deserts, foothills and caves, Bin Laden was eventually found in a relatively comfortable, inconspicuous compound. But how long had he resided in Pakistan?

Who knew where he was?

His compound, with fortified walls, barbed wire and guards, was not exactly discreet. Yet Bin Laden managed to hide away in a country known to be a safe haven for terrorists and a country easily accessed from Afghanistan. In their efforts to find the Saudi, did Pakistan not check the heavily-armoured compounds with unknown occupants? Was he not seen on the street for however long he was there?

Just how much did Pakistan know about the operation?

One of the biggest controversies surrounding the mission itself was the admission by American President Barack Obama that the USA had not told Pakistan that it was going to launch a covert mission, invading sovereign airspace without permission. The president defended his actions by saying that it was a snap decision to raid Abbottabad, but how complicit were Pakistan security forces in taking down the most wanted man in the world?

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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
steveo816
05:48 PM on 03/09/2013
With the Obama administration nothing would surprise me. Bin Laden is Probability still alive having drinks at some resort island in the Pacific.
04:02 PM on 03/06/2013
All I know is, there is no evidence or proof of his death. Which means he's alive. If you tried to find a man for 11 years and kill him, when you finally did, wouldn't you have taken a picture? And please don't mention the silly low quality photoshop....
05:37 PM on 05/03/2012
Five good questions, and here is a sixth: Since we have never seen the photos, can we be sure that it really happened? I do believe that "pics or it didn't happen" is a general rule.
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roads
Strange days have found us....
11:19 AM on 05/04/2012
al-Qaida has accepted that he is dead. It was all over the news.

Why don't you want to accept it?
01:39 PM on 05/07/2012
I do want to accept it. But the government has lied about so many other things that it is always reasonable to demand evidence whenever they claim something. By withholding the alleged photos they are withholding needed evidence.

As for al-Qaida, if I were a high-ranking person in their organization, I would play along and claim he was dead if he were really still alive. Let people think bin Laden is gone so he can work without having a bounty on his head.
04:02 PM on 03/06/2013
Because he's not dead.
04:12 PM on 05/03/2012
The Bin Liner story, like the Diana Princess of Wales story, will be dug over and over for many years to come, and still we will never know the entire truth. When Diana was killed in the road crash, the rumours started immediately, "The Queen wanted her dead, Prince Philip was behind it all, the SAS were ordered to take her out, gunshots were heard in the tunnel, reports of a blinding flash designed to dazzle the driver etc etc.
It was a simple accident, Fayeds son Dodi had ordered the driver to outrun the papperatzi, and a heavily armoured car is not as easily handled at speed. It hit the concrete pillar in the tunnel at very high speed. Neither Diana nor Dodi were wearing seat belts, and were hurled foreward to their deaths. One of Dianas earrings was found embedded in the dashboard, indicating the level of impact.
The Royal Family had no reason at all to want her dead, Diana was destroying her public image on a daily basis with her behaviour. Newspapers were calling her some very nasty names, but had to resort to Saint Diana to appease their readers once she was killed.
Rest assured, Bin Liner rumours will be about for many years yet.
09:11 AM on 05/03/2012
So it seems conspiracy theorists won't be satisfied until OBL makes some kind of statement from beyond the grave or wherever hes 'hidden' to confirm the manner of his passing......i am sooooo glad i'm not a conspiracy theorist!!
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Neil McNab
11:21 AM on 05/03/2012
Yes, just swallow hole the official line..so much easier.
07:06 PM on 05/04/2012
whole
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05:49 AM on 05/03/2012
don't buy it- or nine eleven- neo-con propaganda. Which is why cable news is dead.
08:57 AM on 05/03/2012
And man didn't land on the moon.....and Tony Tiger didn't invent frosties.....and Colonel Sanders is still alive and well.....ITS ALL A CONSPIRACY PEOPLE!!! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!! ARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!
09:49 AM on 05/03/2012
straw man argument
05:06 AM on 05/03/2012
Way too many holes in the story. Am I the only one who thinks that the timing was opportune to rally support for a president quickly losing poularity?
08:42 AM on 05/03/2012
Yes you are. ;o) Obama did something Bush and clinton could not do....
11:35 AM on 05/03/2012
Perhaps. I've seen no evidence.
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roads
Strange days have found us....
11:21 AM on 05/04/2012
repubs just can not stand that a dem did what Bush didn't. It's still killing them.
09:54 AM on 05/03/2012
It was presumed that he was long dead before he was officially "killed, because he was known to be terminally ill. "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believe is false."- William Casey, CIA Director 1981
11:37 AM on 05/03/2012
My thought was that he may have been killed years before with a bunker bomb. Who knows? It's a mystery at this point because evidence has not been made available to the public.
01:43 AM on 05/03/2012
The official government story is that Seal Team Six killed bin Laden last year in a compound in Pakistan and after a positive identification was made his body was dumped in the ocean to eliminate the possibility of his burial place becoming a shrine. We have also been led to believe that returning him to the U.S. for trial would have been problematic for a number of reasons and so the decision was made, in advance, that he would be executed on site. This is all very plausible, of course, but it doesn't eliminate the possibility that bin Laden may have been taken alive (well within the capabilities of the SEAL team involved) and is being held somewhere incommunicado while every last shred of INTEL is extracted from him. After all, consider the number of of individuals who were scooped up and held for years and subjected to 'enhanced interrogation' based on little more than 'guilt by association'. Is it too far-fetched to believe that such a high value target (the apex of the pyramid so to speak) would have been rendered to a secret location until everything he could possibly know was elicited from him over a long period of time? Is it too far-fetched to believe that the government would release a cover story saying he was dead to forestall desperate attempts on the part of his followers to extract him from custody? These are reasonable questions to ask.
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Ben F
03:11 AM on 05/03/2012
Sounds about right to me.
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05:51 AM on 05/03/2012
wonder why bush didn't think he was so important? Because ole george knew he was already dead. They saved it as a trick up their sleeve to a propaganda rich public ethos that thrives on salaciousness and innuendo.
08:59 AM on 05/03/2012
Are you seriously trying to say that THEY would allow George Bush with the intelligence of a small badger to make such decisions.....purleeeeze!!!
01:30 AM on 05/03/2012
Is there even a why question in all of that?!
Does it matters?! Anymore?
Too much people died because of Osama actions, even after 9.11, cause of the USA war on terrorism.
If he is dead, good!
if he is not... the bad is done. What else to do! Kill more inocent people than he did!?
War is just war, and it's alot more than the Earth can afford.
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nastan sparlos
Will Solyndra panels work in a nuclear winter?
12:57 AM on 05/03/2012
If Osama bin Laden died in that raid -- which I'm not convinced of -- it is very strange that he wasn't captured alive. Imagine what details he could have provided regarding the 911 attacks.
10:22 PM on 05/03/2012
"If Osama bin Laden died in that raid -- which I'm not convinced of -- it is very strange that he wasn't captured alive."

If he was killed, how could he be taken alive? Also, we're assuming he's suddenly going to sing about all his crimes, if taken alive?
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florenzfan
Illegitimate Father of our Nation.
06:32 PM on 05/04/2012
a circular argument from radius.
08:24 PM on 05/02/2012
In 1998 it was OK to talk about Bin Laden's CIA involvement.

http://web.archive.org/web/19981202035147/http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp
07:54 PM on 05/02/2012
how do you explain Benazir Bhutto telling David Frost, back in 2007, about the assassination of Osama Bin Laden?....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO8B6fpFSQ
10:00 AM on 05/03/2012
You mean the month before she herself was assasinated right? ;)
01:44 PM on 05/03/2012
yes, a month before she died, in that interview with David Frost, she talks about Osama Bin Laden being assassinated by those who had previously tried to assassinate her.
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Brant Kelsey
advocate of a peaceful coup de tat.......
06:05 AM on 05/02/2012
You see it isn't/wasn't the Government that killed OBL, It was the Corporate/Global/Banking/MilitaryIndustrial/Cabal.

I wouldn't say it was the "government" per se, as that is theorized to be the People. That is the Real conspiracy: But I would say that the gentleman gentry, that comprise the monied interests that put forth the puppets who provide the charade of Democracy, in fact were complicit in these deaths, among others. As well as several conflicts, as well as deposing unfriendly regimes: There IS an amoral and faceless coterie behind the geographies of Nations, that have no constraints of those Nations Laws, and have more wealth than the Nations they orchestrate through purchased Policy.

But we're entitled to the fantasy and as most delusions, invariably will leave us impoverished and mumbling to ourselves a day late and a dollar short. The ingenious nature of a perceived Democracy is that allows JUST ENOUGH DISSENT to portray the possibility of free expression: The mid 60's to the early 70's the threat of actual democracy was palpable and real: And thus extreme sanctions were required
08:56 AM on 05/03/2012
You should be careful with comments like that or THEY will be coming for you....THEY dont like people talking about THEIR conspiracies in such a loose manner.....be afraid....be VERY afraid!!!
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Brant Kelsey
advocate of a peaceful coup de tat.......
11:53 PM on 05/03/2012
Wary, surely, but never afraid. We go as we go. They come as they come. I would love to give vent, alongside several other million, who are also tired and distressed at what we've become: I would love to give airing to these and many grievances, more tangibly than mere voice.........live free or die? I like the sound of that. As well wheter it is resolved we perish now, or resolved we perish later, it is nonetheless resolved that death will come: It would be, I believe, to select the time and place and to select the "cause", far more noble.......than simply waiting to be claimed while performing the role of a drone, as a slave, or merely chattel for whatever ill-conceived plan "they" may have for me. Though I am pretty much resigned to reason, in that as Thoreau said government is best that governs least: But am more leaning to the disposition that government is best that govern not a ALL
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rightasrain
02:53 AM on 05/02/2012
He's gone. The chase is over. His threats could live on but the master mind is somewhere at the bottom of the sea or wherever he may be, who cares?
01:37 AM on 05/03/2012
I hope that's true!
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Brant Kelsey
advocate of a peaceful coup de tat.......
12:14 AM on 05/02/2012
And everyone has seemingly to forgot, rather conveniently, that for years Bin Laden was "OUR BOY" in Afghanistan, Saddam, "OUR BOY" In Iraq..............And a whole litany of "OUR BOYS" before that: It seems it doesn't end well for "OUR BOYS"

Add to the Sordid little tale, that immediately after the 911 "attacks" With all air space closed to domestic Air Travel...............The Bin Laden family was flown to "Safety" while the entire population of the US was "grounded" and relegated to watching what would eventuate to be the selling of a couple more Wars.

And of course, "OUR BOYS" would figure prominently in Both.

So me move from the Allegory of Plato's Cave.........to the manifestation of Hegel's Theory: And the masses are moved, again, to protect the interests of the Global oligarchs and Plutocrats. Hegel's Theory? THESIS=ANTITHESIS=SYNTHESIS......... and that's how it crawls across the screen to the cheers and the bleating