ISLAMABAD: Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday raked up yet another controversy by calling a slain terrorist and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden a “shaheed” (martyr) while addressing the National Assembly.
A viral video clip showed how the PTI leader lashed out at the United States for how Laden had been killed in Abbottabad. Khan said, “shaheed kar diya”.
“We helped the Americans in ‘war on terror’ but the embarrassment we had to face for their allegations of Pakistan being a safe haven for terrorists is very terrible. Our ally is secretly coming into our country and killing a terrorist and we don’t even have an idea,” he added.
The clip, posted by journalist Naila Inayat on Twitter, seems to be from the Parliament of the country.
Osama bin Laden was the head of the global terror group Al Qaeda and the brain behind the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States in 2001.
Osama bin Laden was killed in a military operation by US Navy Seals in 2011 at the garrison town Abbottabad. He was accused of engineering a number of terror attacks worldwide, particularly targeting the American installations including the 9/11 incident of 2001 when close to 3,000 people lost their lives when five planes were hijacked to target American cities.
This is, however, not the first time that Imran Khan has showed a soft corner for bin Laden.
In September last year, during his US tour, Khan said Pakistan had informed the American security agencies about the presence of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. But he stated that the US should not have undertaken a “covert” operation to kill bin Laden keeping Pakistan completely in the dark. (ANI)
