Osama bin Laden death conspiracy theories

[1][10] Several photos of the aftermath of the raid were given to Reuters by an anonymous Pakistani security official, but though all appeared to be authentic, they were taken after the U.S. forces had left and none of them included evidence regarding Bin Laden's fate.

That's our view.On April 26, 2012, a US federal judge decided in the case Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Defense, et al that the DoD did not need to release any evidence to the public.

On 20 May 2015, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a sizeable number of documents recovered from the compound in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was hiding.

[28] Senior Pakistani officials disseminated the theory that no firefight ever took place, and that whomever the U.S. forces captured, they executed him outside the compound, and took his body away on a helicopter.

[29] Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), stated in an interview with CNN that he believed Bin Laden had died many years ago, and that the official death story given out by the American media was a hoax.

Ismail Kosari, an Iranian MP, said that Bin Laden "was just a puppet controlled by the Zionist regime in order to present a violent image of Islam after the September 11 attacks", and that his death "reflects the passing of a temporary US pawn, and symbolizes the end of one era and the beginning of another in American policy in the region".

[15][18] Hersh's U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources stated that the U.S. had learned of Bin Laden's location through a "walk-in", a former ISI officer who came to the US embassy in Islamabad in 2010[36] seeking the $25 million reward, and not through tracking a courier.

[36] Among the incidents that occurred in Pakistan in the months before the killing of Bin Laden were the killing of two Pakistanis by Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor, numerous death threats against the Islamabad CIA station chief after his name was leaked (purportedly by the ISI), the cessation of the issuing of visas for US officials, following which the entire US consulate in Lahore was shut down and moved to Islamabad over concerns about security;[36] increased US anger over the refusal of Pakistan to exert pressure on the Taliban and Haqqani group; the death of 40 Pakistanis including many civilians and later 24 Pakistani soldiers from US drone strikes, the cut off of US supplies to Afghanistan by Pakistan.

[36] Further adding to the implausibility of Hersh's theory, according to Rashid, is the unlikeliness that either the US would have "calmly accepted" Pakistan's hiding/protecting Bin Laden, or that the dozens of Pakistani military, police, fire and bureaucrats—whose silence/complicity would have been required for a successful conspiracy—would have cooperated with the American incursion.

[36] Andrew Anthony, in his review of the book for The Guardian, acknowledged the US government's "long and inglorious history of attempting to bury the facts" but found Hersh's theories "forceful but unconvincing".

[41][42] Sheehan further stated on her Facebook page, "The only proof of [bin Laden] being dead again that we were offered was Obama telling us that there was a DNA match between the man killed by the Navy SEALs and OBL.

"[43] On Russia Today, radio host Alex Jones claimed that Bin Laden had been dead for nearly ten years, and that his body had been kept in liquid nitrogen so that it can be used as a propaganda tool at a future politically expedient time.

[45] Jones also pointed to similar comments made by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2003, "Yes we have been told by intelligence that they've got him, Bush may roll him out but because they exposed that at the election they didn't do it".

[44] Jones further voiced doubts about the official story of bin Laden's death on his radio show telling his listeners, "My friends, this is a complete and total hoax.

"[47] Canadian deputy Leader of the Opposition and MP, Thomas Mulcair, stated in an interview with CBC Television that "I don't think from what I've heard that those pictures [of bin Laden's body] exist".

[53] In October 2020, then-U.S. President Donald Trump retweeted an article which claimed that the Osama that was killed in the raid wasn't him but was actually a body double.

[55] Bin Laden, who suffers from renal deficiency, has been periodically undergoing dialysis in a Peshawar military hospital with the knowledge and approval of the Inter-Services Intelligence, (ISI) if not of Gen. Pervez Musharraf himself.

[56] Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department.

The London Telegraph reported, "The recording was dismissed by the Bush administration yesterday as sick propaganda, possibly designed to mask the fact the al-Qa'eda leader was already dead.

Also in October 2002, the Washington D.C.-based news service The World Tribune, citing Israeli intelligence sources, reported that the United States and Israel have concluded that bin Laden died in Afghanistan in December 2001.