“The Exile”
According to a sensational new book “The Exile” about Osama bin Laden’s escape from Afghanistan after 9/11 and his sanctuary in Pakistan, Aafia Siddiqui was given up to the Americans by none other than her husband’s uncle and the mastermind of the planes hijacking operation, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Interrogated in Guantanamo Bay, “one of the first he sacrificed was a woman: the new wife of his nephew Ammar al-Balochi, a talented young Pakistani neuroscientist from Karachi.”
KSM wasn’t the only one who betrayed Al-Qaeda operatives. As we read on, we learn that Osama bin Laden’s elder wife Khairiah had a hand in her husband’s detection. May 2, 2011, Abbottabad, in the midst of the operation: “(Amal, bin Laden’s youngest wife) glanced fearfully towards Khairiah’s room, across the corridor. The door was firmly shut. Amal now felt certain she had been right. They had been betrayed by one of their own.”
Elsewhere, describing Osama bin Laden’s last moments, the book states: “According to O’Neill (a SEAL), his $65,000 night vision goggles gave him an extraordinary view of Osama bin Laden, who stood ten inches away, unable to see what was coming at him. ‘I was amazed how tall he was, taller than all of us … he had his hands on a woman’s shoulders, pushing her ahead … Amal saw O’Neill raise his weapon, and she instinctively rushed him … O’Neill raised his weapon extra high to meet the main target’s head … he crumpled onto the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again, Bap! Same place.”
Finally, wounded “Amal lay gazing up at the blood-spattered ceiling, thinking about her dead husband. After six years cooped up in this airtight place, the end they had never dared discuss had come and gone in just a few seconds.”