It is a statement that should not take away the nickname prevalent in his country of "Taliban Khan". Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Thursday that former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed on May 2, 2011 by US special forces, died as a "martyr". The speech before the National Assembly, where he mentioned the complicated relations between Islamabad and Washington after the American raid, provoked a wave of hostile reactions in the country.
"The whole world has insulted us"
“After that, the whole world insulted us (…). Our ally is killing someone in our country without even informing us, "said the Prime Minister, describing the events as" humiliation "for many Pakistanis. But not all Pakistanis seem to have the same reading of events. Opponents and human rights defenders immediately expressed their indignation. "Imran Khan faked history," reacted Khawaja Asif, the foreign minister of the previous government, to parliament. “Muslims around the world are fighting the discrimination they face because of recent terrorism. And our Prime Minister is making the situation worse by calling OBL [Osama bin Laden] the martyr of Islam, ”tweeted Meena Gabeena, a human rights defender.
In order to relieve the pressure, the Minister of Technologies, Fawad Chaudhry, found an original way. According to him, "the language [of the Prime Minister] had forked".
Did the Pakistani intelligence services know?
For years, Pakistan has officially denied knowing that the founder of Al-Qaeda was hiding on its territory until he was shot during an overnight raid on a garrison town north of Islamabad. This prompted allegations of collusion between the authorities and Al-Qaeda. In 2019, Imran Khan had however declared during a trip to the United States that Pakistani military intelligence had provided Washington with a track that had made it possible to flush out Bin Laden. Asad Durrani, former director of military intelligence, also said on Al Jazeera in 2015 that the agency probably knew where the 9/11 brain was hiding and hoped to use it as currency before it was killed.
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- Osama bin Laden
- Al-qaida
- Pakistan
- World