[Abbottabad Commission report]

About this book

Osama bin Laden lived unmolested in Pakistan for almost a decade because of the "collective incompetence and negligence" of the country's security forces, according to this Pakistani government report. The four-member Abbottabad Commission, led by a Supreme Court judge, interviewed 201 people, including the country's intelligence leaders, in an effort to piece together the events around the American raid on May 2, 2011, that killed Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and embarrassed the Pakistani government. The report, apparently prepared in approximately January 2013, was suppressed by authorities in Islamabad. It was leaked to the media in July 2013. The prominent Middle East-based broadcaster al Jazeera posted it on its website, acknowledging that there is one omission, a page of testimony from a Pakistani spy chief that appeared to describe elements of Pakistan's security cooperation with the United States. The commission, in its report, leans toward incompetence rather than conspiracy in explaining Pakistan's failure to catch bin Laden after he arrived in the country in mid-2002. It casts doubt on the testimony of key government officials, noting that key questions remain unanswered, and suggests the possibility that some Pakistani security officials covertly helped bin Laden.