Still more evidence that Pakistan is not an ally and has not been for years — as if any more were needed.
“ISI controlled Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound: Book,” PTI, April 28, 2016:
WASHINGTON: The Abbottabad hideout of Osama bin Laden was under ISI control and a Pakistan Army doctor treated the most dreaded terrorist in the world before he was killed in a daring raid by US commandos in 2011, according to a new book.
In fact, the doctor Amir Aziz, of the rank of major, who lived in a compound near bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, was rewarded by the CIA with a share of the $25 million bounty the US had put up because a DNA sample had conclusively proved the al-Qaeda leader’s identity.
In his latest book, ‘The Killing of Osama bin Laden’, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claims that ISI got hold of bin Laden in 2006 after paying bribes to some of the tribal leaders. At the time he was said to be very ill.
“Early on in his confinement at Abbottabad, the ISI had ordered Amir Aziz, a doctor and a major in the Pakistani army, to move nearby to provide treatment,” Hersh claims, basing his account on a conversation he had with an unidentified retired Pakistan Army official.
And all this while the Pakistani leadership in particular the army chief and ISI boss repeatedly told the US that they did not know the whereabouts of bin Laden.
“It’s understood in Washington that elements of the ISI believe that maintaining a relationship with the Taliban leadership inside Afghanistan is essential to national security. The ISI’s strategic aim is to balance Indian influence in Kabul….