Pakistan military spokesperson Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor Wednesday said the US 'ditched' Pakistan in its May 2, 2011 unilateral operation in which Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad following the country's premier agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, provided the intelligence lead.
"In search of Osama bin Laden, it was Pakistan which traced the first call and shared a detailed intelligence with the US as the first lead to trace his [OBL] location. Instead of a joint operation, the US resorted to a unilateral operation and ditched Pakistan," said Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor in a press conference while responding to media queries off the camera.
He said the ISI led the US Special Forces to operate against al-Qaeda leader OBL, since ISI traced the location of OBL through a phone call which it shared with the US.
Pakistan has until now officially denied having any knowledge of the al-Qaeda chief until he was shot dead in a night time raid by the US Special Forces on May 2, 2011, an incident that was a major national embarrassment and caused ties between the two countries to plummet.
When Imran Khan, during his visit to Washington, was asked in an interview with Fox News by host Bret Baier whether his country would release a jailed doctor whose fake immunization drive helped the US track and kill bin Laden in 2011, he replied, "This is a very emotive issue, because Shakeel Afridi in Pakistan is considered a spy."
"We in Pakistan always felt that we were an ally of the US and if we had been given the information about Osama bin Laden, we should have taken him out." Baier then asked if Khan understood the skepticism around the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for leaking key information, to which Khan replied: "And yet it was ISI that gave the information which led to the location of Osama bin Laden...If you ask CIA, it would tell it was ISI which gave the initial location through the phone connection."-NUZHAT NAZAR
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