'Osama offered no resistance to US commandos'

Osama bin Laden, who boasted all his life that he would go down fighting and would ask his bodyguards to shoot him if ever he came near Americans, offered no resistance when US commandos cornered him in his Abbottabad hideout a year ago, claims a new book.

Al-Qaeda emir Osama bin Laden, who all his life boasted that he would go down fighting and would ask his bodyguards to shoot him if ever he came near Americans, offered no resistance when US commandos cornered him in his Abbottabad hideout a year ago, claims a new book.

HT Image

"For all his bluster that he would go down fighting and his bodyguards would shoot him if he were ever found by the Americans, when the moment finally came, bin Laden went out not with a bang but with a whimper," wrote Peter Bergen, author of the 'Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden -from 9/11 to Abbottabad' that hit the bookstores this week.

Director of New America Foundation – a Washington-based think-tank and national security analyst of the CNN, Bergen in his new book provides fresh insight into the last few hours of bin Laden and the successful American operation that killed the most wanted terrorist of the world on May 2 last year.

"The 54-four-year-old bin Laden may have grown complacent or tired during his decade on the run; he had no real escape plan, and there was no secret passageway out of his house. Perhaps he expected some kind of warning that never came. Or perhaps he knew that a firefight inside the enclosed spaces of his house would likely end up killing some of his wives and children," Bergan wrote in his book giving a detailed account of what happened when US commandos entered his safe house.