Manhunt for Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, the founder and former leader of al-Qaeda, went into hiding following the start of the War in Afghanistan in order to avoid capture by the United States for his role in the September 11 attacks, and having been on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since 1999.

[1] After evading capture at the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, his whereabouts became unclear, and various rumours about his health, continued role in al-Qaeda, and location were circulated.

In December 2009, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal said that bin Laden would need to be "captured or killed" in order for the U.S. to "finally defeat al-Qaeda.

[5] On May 1, 2011, United States Navy SEALs of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) carried out an assault on the compound on orders from U.S. President Barack Obama.

The SEALs overpowered the compound's remaining residents, killing several, and extracted bin Laden's body (which was subsequently buried at sea) as well as computer hard drives, documents, and other material.

On the day of the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden was at the Khaldan terrorist training camp near Khost, which he left during the night with several Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives after sending his wives and children away across the Durand Line into Pakistan to hide out.

According to one of his wives, bin Laden was reunited with his family for the first time after the 9/11 attacks in the second half of 2002 in Peshawar, the capital city of the Tribal Areas, where they lived for five months in another safe house.

[6] After this, in September 2002, bin Laden took his family into the rural mountain areas of northwest Pakistan (and very notably, not in the tribal belt where main US attention was focused).

Information was collected from Guantánamo Bay detainees, who gave intelligence officers the courier's pseudonym as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, and said that he was a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

[28] Declan Walsh, writing in the New York Times, reported on speculation that Pakistan was planning to charge bin Laden's wives and adult daughters with immigration offenses, rather than simply deporting them, so they would be in prison and unable to offer details of Pakistani cooperation with bin Laden to neighboring country India and its intelligence agency RAW.

First, rumors surfaced that bin Laden was killed or fatally injured during U.S. bombardments, most notably near Tora Bora, or that he died of natural causes.

[citation needed] Between 2002 and 2011, the most common suggestion from U.S. national security officials and others was that "their best intelligence suggested that bin Laden was living along the mountainous, ungoverned border of Pakistan and Afghanistan," such as in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (an area that includes Waziristan) or volatile regions in North-West Frontier Province (now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), where an ongoing insurgency has taken place.

[29] Less common suggestions were that bin Laden had died (either by illness or military attack), or that he was alive and living in countries other than Pakistan, such as Afghanistan or Iran.