Endless mystery

The dust has settled over the site which was once home to Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad – but there is any number of unanswered questions which will remain answered. Where Bin Laden’s body is resting is a question that has fed a raft of conspiracy theories the size of the Titanic. We can also wonder endlessly why the Pakistani government decided to raze the compound anyway. It had become something of an unwelcome tourist attraction though. Perhaps it is for this reason that it was flattened, to prevent it becoming a shrine and place of pilgrimage.

The site was visited several times by our own investigators after the raid, and the Americans were also allowed access, but neither foreign nor domestic media had a chance to look inside the compound in any detail. The entire episode was a severe embarrassment for the Pakistani government and the armed forces in particular, and was part of a portfolio of embarrassments and irritations in 2011 that started with the Raymond Davis affair and ended, hopefully, with the Salala assault. A symbolic line has now been drawn under the death of Osama bin Laden, but the reality is that his death, the circumstances surrounding it and what we did or did not know about his presence in Abbottabad are going to be the subject of enduring mystery and endless speculation. The Americans took what they describe as a ‘treasure-trove’ of information from the compound, we took whatever the Americans did not and neither side is about to say what it has got or what it is going to do with it any time soon. And there may be much that we will never hear on events surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden.