Pak PM “Imran Khan called Osama bin Laden “shaheed.”
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on June 25 called 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden a “martyr” during his speech in the National Assembly, reports suggest.Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces who raided his compound in Pakistan in 2011.
While addressing the National Assembly, he said, “There was an event in the past that was a matter of shame for us when Americans came to Abbottabad and killed and martyred Osama bin Laden.”
A video clip, posted by journalist Naila Inayat on Twitter, showed how the PTI leader lashed out at the United States for how Laden had been killed in Abbottabad. Khan said, “shaheed kar diya”.
“America came inside Pakistan and killed and martyred Osama Bin Laden. After which all the countries cursed us. Pakistan has faced humiliation for many years in war on terror,” news agency ANI reported Khan as saying.
At the time of his death, the al-Qaeda chief was the world’s most wanted terrorist. According to reports, even before Khan had become the Prime Minister, he had refused to call Bin Laden a terrorist.
This is, however, not the first time that Imran Khan has showed a soft corner for bin Laden, according to news agency ANI. In September 2019, during his US tour, Khan said Pakistan had informed the American security agencies about the presence of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, said ANI.
But he stated that the US should not have undertaken a “covert” operation to kill bin Laden keeping Pakistan completely in the dark.
Recalling an incident that he said caused “embarrassment” to Pakistan, the premier said: “The Americans came to Abbottabad and killed, martyred Osama bin Laden. When happened after that? The entire world cursed at us and spoke ill of us.”
However, during his tour of the US in September last year, he had claimed that Pakistan had informed the US intelligence agencies regarding Bin Laden’s whereabouts. He had, however, repeated that the US should not have undertaken a “covert” operation while keeping Pakistan in the dark.
Reacting to the prime minister’s speech, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said that Imran’s remarks were consistent with “his history of appeasement to violent extremism”.
“It is during his government that those involved in APS Army Public School] attack ‘escaped’ & those involved in Daniel Pearl’s murder get relief. Running with the hare & hunting with the hound,” he said in a tweet.
Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, the spokesperson for the PPP chairman, also released a statement in which he called Imran a “national security threat”.
“By labelling Osama bin Laden a martyr, Imran Khan has become a national security threat. If he is a martyr, then what is the status of those civilians and members of our armed forces who embraced martyrdom in the attacks by Al Qaeda?
“Thousands of civilians and youth were martyred in attacks by Al Qaeda,” he said. Khokhar also questioned the lesson the prime minister was trying to teach the younger generation.
“Today Imran Khan has proven himself to be ‘Taliban Khan’ in parliament. The Imran Khan-Taliban nexus was evident from the meetings between the two.” This is the same person who had called for the Taliban to open their offices in Pakistan, he said.
Separately, PPP Senator Sherry Rehman said that Pakistan was still a victim of terrorist attacks due to Osama Bin Laden. “Because of him the country is in such a state and you are presenting him as a hero on the assembly floor?”
She added that Imran’s words will go down in history. “Remember that Osama Bin Laden can be the PM’s hero but not the nation’s. He was and will remain a criminal of the state and the people.”
Prime Minister Imran during his trip to the United States last year had said that Pakistan’s main spy agency provided the US with a lead that helped them find and take out Osama bin Laden.
The prime minister also said that he never felt more humiliated than he did on May 2, 2011 when American commandos took him out without informing Pakistan.
“Never did I feel more humiliated than I did when OBL was taken out in Pakistan,” he said in his speech at the US Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington. “Here was a country which was an ally, which did not trust us [enough to tell about the raid]. We do not want to be humiliated like this again.”
Asad Durrani, a former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence chief, had also told Al Jazeera in 2015 that the ISI probably knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding and had shared this information with the Americans before the Abbottabad raid. But this was the first such confirmation by a Pakistani official.
(With Agencies Reports).
