Osama Bin Laden, 1957 – 2001
Nicholas Kollerstrom
In Orwell’s novel 1984, there is a figure called Emmanuel Goldstein who functions as an all-purpose enemy, even though we gather that he may actually have died some time ago. Osama Bin Laden has been used in a similar manner by the Powers that Be, by a process of identity theft during the last days of his life. In reality there have been no sightings or reports of him since 2001. I here argue that he died on or around December 16th, 2001, in consequence of the intensive bombing of his then-residence the Tora Bora caves of eastern Afghanistan; and that he had no involvement in the events of 9/11.
Osama Bin Laden - Warrior of God or CIA Asset?
It is a life which needs to become a film, a transcontinental drama. But, any film company making such could expect a glowing future…. Far safer, to make a film of the bogeyman we all know and fear – but, who never existed. The Sunday Times in March 2007 had a nine-page article about where he might be lurking, and how no-one had been able to find ‘the world’s most wanted man.’ It gave not the slightest hint that he might have died five years ago (Christina Lamb, The Invisible Man, The Sunday Times Magasine, ‘Who is hiding the world’s most wanted man?’). Pakistan was blamed, as if it could have hid him through the years, even though he was over six foot six high and his distinctive appearance was known all round the world. The article conceded that ‘the last positive sighting’ of OBL had been in the December, 2001 US attack upon Tora Bora.
I did a book review concerning the speeches and videos allegedly produced by OBL. ‘Messages from Bin Laden,’ suggesting that all of them from 2002 onwards were faked.
His final months
The last months of Bin Laden’s life, July to December, are of world-historical importance. In July 2001 he was residing for a week in an American hospital in Dubai to treat his kidney trouble, as reported by the French paper Le Figaro. He had an operation on the 4th. This story was reported in Le Monde and the Guardian on 1st November but denied by the CIA and also reported by John Snow on Channel 4 News. Snow first confirmed the story with the British doctor in Dubai who treated Bin Laden: source Martin Summers, of the London 9/11 Sceptics and he there met CIA station chief Larry Mitchell on 12th July. Many members of the Bin Laden family came to visit him - ‘There goes the story that he’s a black sheep!’ was Mike Ruppert’s laconic comment. He flew off on the 14th in a private jet. We do not hear about Bin Laden him again until September 10th, when he reappears in a military hospital in Rawalpindi in Pakistan – with some military protection - again for kidney dialysis (Nafeez Ahmed, The War on Freedom, How and Why America was Attacked September 11, 2001, 2002, p.223; Thierry Meyssian, 9/11 The big Lie, 2002, p. 107.)
On September 12th a Pakistani newspaper reported OBL’s first denial that he had been involved in the event of 9/11, then on the 16th OBL’s assistant Abdul Samad faxed a message to the Afghan Islamic Press (in Islamabad, Pakistan) that was broadcast by al-Jazeera in Quatar. In it OBL declared, ‘I categorically state that I have not done this,’ adding that he had an agreement with Mohammed Omar, chief Mullah of the Taliban in Afghanistan, that prohibited his involvement in such political activity. A week later, on 22nd September, he gave a longer set of replies to questions from the Pakistani newspaper ‘Ummaut’:
"I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; to the people who want to make the present century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks.... The American system is totally in the control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States ... I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom."
This accords with a statement of his some years earlier:
“We also have been hit with some of the traces of this campaign as we were accused of funding terrorism, and being members of an international terrorist organisation. Their aims in making these allegations were to place psychological pressure on the Mujahideen and their supporters so that they would forsake the obligation of Jihad and the resistance of oppression and American Israeli occupation of Islamic sacred lands. However, our gratitude to God, their campaign was not successful, as terrorising the American occupiers is a religious and logical obligation. . . .
As for their accusations of terrorising the innocent, the children, and the women, these are in the category "accusing others with their own affliction in order to fool the masses". The evidence overwhelmingly shows America and Israel killing the weaker men, women, and children in the Muslim world and elsewhere…Then, killing hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq, and whose numbers (of dead) continue to increase as a result of the sanctions. Despite the continuing American occupation of the country of the two sacred mosques, America continues to claim that it is upholding the banner of freedom and humanity, whilst these deeds which they did, you would find that the most ravenous of animals would not descend to. . . .
As for what America accuses us of, of killing innocent people, they have not been able to offer any evidence, despite the magnitude of their expenditure on their intelligence services…Similar is our history with respect to our differences with the Saudi regime: all that has been proved is our joy at the killing of the American soldiers in Riyadh and Khobar” (October 1996).
On the 20th September, OBL was officially designated by President Bush as responsible for the attacks. Then on 23rd Secretary of State Colin Powell promised that a paper would shortly be ready with the supporting evidence. Although announced repeatedly, no such paper ever appeared (Meyssan 9/11, pp. 82, 102). A letter by OBL of 24th September urges Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan to stand firm against aggression from the ‘Crusaders’ (R. Jacquard, In the Name of Osama Bin Laden (2002) has just this one post-911 letter, p. 258), and contains no hint that he might have been involved in the event of 9-11, still less any approval of the notion of attacking America.
In mid-September the Taliban responded to US requests for OBL to be handed over, by saying they would be happy to do so, if some evidence for his complicity in the 9/11 event could be produced. (That may have been unwise, given that the UN Security Council had two years earlier passed a resolution demanding that the Taliban ‘hand over’ Bin Laden, though without specifying to whom (UN Security Council Resolution 1267, passed 15 October 1999); however, let us recall that he was regarded as a hero in Afghanistan for having driven out the Soviet Union). After that request for evidence was declined, the Taliban offered on October 1st to give over OBL for trial to an Islamic court in Pakistan - apparently with OBL’s approval; this proposal was vetoed by Pakistan’s President. Days later, the bombs started falling...
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