Topic: Bin Laden letters reveal al-Qaida's fears of drone strikes and infiltration (Read 238 times)

Osama bin Laden was planning a new wave of attacks and a media campaign in the US just days before he was killed by US Navy Seals in May 2011, documents released by US authorities reveal.

The papers were selected from huge quantities of material seized by the US special forces team from the house in the northern Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad where they found Bin Laden and shot him dead.

The extremist leader had been living in Abbottabad for about five years with two wives, several children and a number of grandchildren when he was killed in the raid.

Previous releases of documents have revealed Bin Laden’s reading list, as well as details of his austere and claustrophobic domestic life.

These latest documents show that despite diminishing capabilities and the loss of dozens of senior militants, Bin Laden and his aides planned a media campaign to mark the 10th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the documents show.

The al-Qaida senior leadership also plotted a diplomatic strategy and discussed climate change and the US financial collapse.

In an undated letter “To the American people”, Bin Laden ridicules Barack Obama for failing to end the war in Afghanistan, and accurately predicts that the US president’s plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will fail.


Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/01/bin-laden-letters-reveal-al-qaidas-fears-of-drone-strikes-and-infiltration