Pakistan allows CIA to search bin Laden compound in Abbottabad
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Pakistan has agreed to allow the Central Investigation Agency (CIA) to send a forensics team to examine the Abbottabad compound where al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was killed, US officials have said.
The Saudi-born terrorist, who had evaded capture for a decade, was killed on May 2 in a top secret operation involving a small team of US Special Forces in Pakistan’s Abbottabad city.
Pakistan has given permission to the CIA to use sophisticated equipment in a search for al-Qaeda materials that might have been hidden inside walls or buried at the site, The Washington Post quoted US officials, as saying on the condition of anonymity.
The arrangement would allow the CIA for the first time to enter a complex that it had previously scrutinized only from a distance, using satellites, stealth drones and spies operating from a nearby safe house that was shuttered when bin Laden was killed, the paper said.
US officials said that a CIA team is expected to arrive at the Abbottabad compound within days, and that the objective is to scrub the site for items that were not recovered by American commandos during the raid or Pakistani security forces that secured the facility in the aftermath, the paper added.
“The assault team was there for only 40 minutes,” a US official said, adding that the aim is to return to the site 'to do another, more thorough, look'.
Pakistan has also agreed to allow the CIA to examine materials that Pakistan’s security forces have recovered from the compound, officials said.
CIA Deputy Director Michael J. Morell negotiated access to the Abbottabad site during a trip to Islamabad last week, when he met with Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, officials said.
The CIA has also asked Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, for assistance in analysing some of the records that were seized in the raid and brought to a CIA document exploitation facility in Northern Virginia, according to the paper.
In particular, US officials said that the CIA is seeking help in deciphering references to names of individuals and places. US intelligence officials have described the stash of material recovered from the bin Laden compound as the largest intelligence haul ever recovered relating to al-Qaeda or any other terrorist network.
Pakistan’s agreement is seen as an encouraging sign that the two spy services will continue cooperating despite anger in Islamabad over the American operation to kill bin Laden, and a series of recent ruptures between the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart, said the paper.
The CIA plans involve the use of infrared cameras and other devices capable of identifying materials embedded behind walls, inside safes or underground, the paper said, adding that the agency also has equipment that could be used to recover information that has been burned or otherwise damaged.
Pakistan agreed in part because it does not have such equipment, officials said, and breaking through portions of the structure to conduct a search might risk destroying any materials hidden inside.
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