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| US President Barack Obama |
The president was “never in favour” of releasing the photo, a senior Democratic official close to the White House said. The president noted that few credible people have questioned the death and that conspiracy theorists would not be satisfied with a photo, the official said.
Obama’s position was supported by Defence Secretary, Robert Gates and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic official said.
The president’s inner circle was not happy with CIA Director, Leon Panetta’s remarks on the matter on Tuesday, the Democratic official said.
Panetta said Tuesday that he believed a photo would be released at some point. “I just think it’s important – they know we have it, to release it,” Panetta said.
White House spokesman Jay Carney noted on Tuesday that there were “sensitivities here in terms of the appropriateness of releasing photographs of Osama bin Laden in the aftermath” of the killing.
House Speaker, John Boehner, the top Republican in the House of Representatives, “supports the president’s decision,” Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel told CNN yesterday.
But Rep, Duncan Hunter, a Republican former Marine who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, disagreed with the decision. “As Americans, we deserve to see them,” he said.
One of bin Laden’s daughters has told Pakistani interrogators that she saw her father shot and killed by U.S. forces, a senior Pakistani intelligence source said yesterday.
The daughter, believed to be 12 or 13-years-old, was among those left behind at the compound after Monday’s U.S. raid, the source said.
Pakistani officials are interrogating a number of people left behind, the source said. Among them were two or three women, including one believed to be bin Laden’s wife – a 29-year-old Yemeni citizen, the source said.
U.S. officials have said bin Laden’s wife was in the room with him and rushed at U.S. special forces, who then shot her in the leg. U.S. officials have not publicly identified the wife or anyone else at the compound aside from bin Laden.
Eight or nine children were also left behind, the Pakistani intelligence source said.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that members of bin Laden’s family were “in safe hands and being looked after in accordance with law. Some of them needing medical care are under treatment in the best possible facilities. As per policy, they will be handed over to their countries of origin.”
The Pakistani intelligence source told CNN yesterday that four men at the compound were killed in addition to bin Laden: bin Laden’s son, two men who were brothers, and an unknown man. That conflicts with information provided by the White House, which said Tuesday that three men and one woman were killed in the operation, in addition to bin Laden.
Bin Laden had 500 euros (about $745) in cash and two telephone numbers sewn into his clothing when he was killed, a congressional source present at a classified briefing on the operation Tuesday told CNN yesterday. Another congressional source also said bin Laden had money sewn into his clothes.
Questions are mounting about why Pakistan failed to locate or bring bin Laden to justice.
According to two sources at the briefing Tuesday, Panetta told lawmakers that Pakistani officials either “were involved or incompetent. Neither place is a good place to be.”
The senior Pakistani intelligence official said there is now “total mistrust” between the United States and Pakistan, and that if Panetta made such a statement, it is “totally regrettable. (Panetta) of all people knows how much we have been doing.”
In an interview with TIME magazine, Panetta said “it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets.”
Sen. Richard Lugar, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he thinks many Pakistanis might have known where bin Laden was, including people in the government.
“This is one reason we did not inform the Pakistanis of our actions,” he said Tuesday, noting “there were probably many who were very uncomfortable about the presence likewise.”
Sardar Latif Khosa, governor of Pakistan’s populous Punjab province, said yesterday that bin Laden was not only responsible for deaths in the United States but also for the deaths of thousands of Pakistanis.
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