WASHINGTON: Secluded in his hideaway in Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden suspected Iranian officials might implant tracking devices in his sons, according to a document released Thursday in a batch of materials seized in a 2011 raid that killed the Al-Qaeda leader.
“If they inject you with a shot, this shot might be loaded with a tiny chip,” Bin Laden wrote in an undated letter to his sons, Uthman and Mohammed, who were being allowed to leave Iran. “The syringe size may be normal, but the needle is expected to be larger than normal size. The chip size may be as long as a seed of grain but very thin and smooth.”
In its final hours, the Obama administration released the last of three installments of documents belonging Bin Laden that were collected during the raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
In the second batch of documents, released last March, Bin Laden also expressed the same paranoia in a letter to one of his wives, who also lived in Iran.
“I was told that you went to a dentist in Iran and you were concerned about a filling she put in for you,” Bin Laden wrote. He said he wanted to be told of any concerns she or any of his followers had about “chips planted in any way.”
Tracking down and killing the man behind the 2001 terrorist attacks on America is one of President Barack Obama’s greatest accomplishments.
Intelligence officials have worked for more than two years to declassify the hundreds of documents captured in the raid. The last batch, consisting of 49 documents, includes a running disagreement between Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, which morphed into the Daesh group. Those militants are currently the top target of US counterterrorism efforts.
The Pentagon announced Thursday that the US Air Force attacked a pair of Daesh military camps in Libya, seeking to eliminate extremists who had escaped from their former stronghold of Sirte.
Bin Laden is responsible for orchestrating the Sept. 11 strikes against the US that killed nearly 3,000 people. The attacks drastically changed America’s footprint abroad and challenged some of the most basic tenets of the constitution in an effort to detect terrorists before they strike.
In a letter to a fellow militant, written after 9/11, Bin Laden called on his followers to invent new ways to battle the West.
“If we cannot manufacture weapons like the weapons of the Crusader West, we can destroy its complicated industrial and economic system and exhaust its forces that fight without faith until they escape,” he wrote.
“Therefore, the mujahidin had to create new methods that no one from the West can think about, and one of the examples of this creative thinking is using the airplane as a powerful weapon, like what had happened in the blessed attacks in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania.”
Osama Bin Laden worried that Iran put tracking chip in sons
Osama Bin Laden worried that Iran put tracking chip in sons
UN chief condemns Israeli law blocking electricity, water for UNRWA facilities
- The agency provides education, health and aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned on Wednesday a move by Israel to ban electricity or water to facilities owned by the UN Palestinian refugee agency, a UN spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the move would “further impede” the agency’s ability to operate and carry out activities.
“The Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations remains applicable to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), its property and assets, and to its officials and other personnel. Property used by UNRWA is inviolable,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the secretary-general, said while adding that UNRWA is an “integral” part of the world body.
UNRWA Commissioner General Phillipe Lazzarini also condemned the move, saying that it was part of an ongoing “ systematic campaign to discredit UNRWA and thereby obstruct” the role it plays in providing assistance to Palestinian refugees.
In 2024, the Israeli parliament passed a law banning the agency from operating in the country and prohibiting officials from having contact with the agency.
As a result, UNRWA operates in East Jerusalem, which the UN considers territory occupied by Israel. Israel considers all Jerusalem to be part of the country.
The agency provides education, health and aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. It has long had tense relations with Israel but ties have deteriorated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza and Israel has called repeatedly for UNRWA to be disbanded, with its responsibilities transferred to other UN agencies.
The prohibition of basic utilities to the UN agency came as Israel also suspended of dozens of international non-governmental organizations working in Gaza due to a failure to meet new rules to vet those groups.
In a joint statement, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom said on Tuesday such a move would have a severe impact on the access of essential services, including health care. They said one in three health care facilities in Gaza would close if international NGO operations stopped.
