Former CIA officer John Kiriakou recently detailed in an interview that Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden managed a daring escape from US forces in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, dressed as a woman.
Kiriakou, who was the chief of counterterrorism operations and stationed in Pakistan during that period, recounted the events leading up to the legendary terrorist’s flight.
Bin Laden, branded the most-wanted terrorist by Washington, was tracked by the US military all the way to Afghanistan. The American forces spent nearly a month building a foothold in the region before launching attacks to flush out the terrorist network.
“Then we began attacking known Al Qaeda sites. Again, mostly in the Pashto areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. We believed in October of 2001 that we had Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership cornered at Tora Bora,” Kiriakou told the media.
Bin Laden Disguised As A Woman To Evade Capture
Despite being cornered, Bin Laden executed a clever escape plan. Kiriakou explained that the US military’s translator—secretly working for Al Qaeda—convinced Central Command to let women and children evacuate first, which created the perfect cover for the terrorist to flee.
“The translator convinced General Franks to approve this idea. What ended up happening was bin Laden dressed as a woman, and he escaped under the cover of darkness in the back of a pickup truck into Pakistan,” Kiriakou said. This allowed Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda operatives to slip past US forces undetected, continuing their operations from Pakistan for nearly a decade.
By May 2011, US Special Forces finally tracked Bin Laden to Abbottabad in northern Pakistan, where he was killed during a raid on his safe house.
When asked about Pakistan’s stance on the killing, Kiriakou noted that then-President Pervez Musharraf had already handed full control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to the US in exchange for “millions and millions and millions of dollars in aid.”
ALSO READ: Indian Nurse Jailed, Caned For Molesting Male Visitor At Singapore Hospital
