Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: More than five years have passed, yet the people of Pakistan are unaware what exactly happened on May 2, 2011, when US Marines raided a compound in Abbottabad and killed their most wanted enemy, Osama bin Laden.

And it has been more than three years since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is sitting on a confidential report of Abbottabad Commission, constituted to probe the incident and fix responsibility.

“I demand the prime minister to release our report, as he already promised,” former ambassador Ashraf Jehangir Qazi told Daily Times from New Delhi.

Ashraf was one of the members of Abbottabad Commission and had written a dissenting note as well. The commission interviewed a number of officials and experts to prepare its report. They submitted it to then prime minister in January 2013 only to witness it getting dumped for some obvious reasons.

It is worth mentioning that Al-Jazeera got copy of the confidential 337-page report in July 2013 and released it forthwith. The government of Pakistan refused to own the report.

Qazi said he could not share contents of the report and his dissenting note but stated the commission had fixed the responsibility of that debacle.

According to reports widely published in foreign media, bin Laden along with his three wives and children had been living in that compound for years. The compound was situated less than a mile away from an elite military academy.

The raid on bin Laden compound incurred international embarrassment for Pakistan. The world community had questioned that whether al Qaeda chief was living there under some understanding with the Pakistani establishment.

Pakistan had strongly denied that its intelligence agencies were aware of bin Laden’s presence, in Abbottabad. That prompted the critics to question the efficiency of the state institutions which failed to detect that the world’s most wanted terrorist was living in their backyard.

“What is stopping the prime minister to release the report,” Qazi questioned. He said the commission burnt the midnight oil to prepare the report. He argued the people of Pakistan have the right to know what happened on the fateful night of May

The leaked report of Abbottabad Commission primarily stated only what was already known. It did not identify any specific individual or institution for the May 2 debacle. The commission made general observations which were not enough to hold either the military or civilian leadership responsible.

The commission interviewed almost all high-level officials and security experts to investigate the causes of one of the biggest security lapses in the country. Despite repeated requests the then chief of army staff, the president and the prime minister refused to appear before the commission.