US ‘Martyred’ Osama bin Laden: Imran Khan

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said Thursday that the former Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had been “martyred” by US forces in 2011, a term that reflected a subtle stab at the US as it’s mainly used for honorable figures slain in battle.

Khan used the word during a rambling budget speech in parliament, attacking his predecessors’ foreign policies and saying that Pakistan’s partnership with the United States in the war on terror was a mistake, Pakistani news agencies reported. 

Khan also said that the US used abusive language against Pakistan, blaming Islamabad for its failures in neighboring Afghanistan and most of all — refused to tell Islamabad of its operation against bin Laden in 2011 before carrying out the Navy SEALs nighttime raid. 

The special operations force swooped into Pakistan’s military garrison town of Abbottabad in the middle of the night on May 2, 2011, killing bin Laden and several of his operatives.

“We sided with the U.S. in the War on Terror but they came here and killed him, martyred him and … used abusive language against us (and) did not inform us (of the raid), despite the fact that we lost 70,000 people in war on terror,” Khan told Parliament.

“The way we supported America in the war on terror, and the insults we had to face in return… They blamed us for every failure in Afghanistan. They openly held us responsible because they did not succeed in Afghanistan,” he added.

It comes as the US has repeatedly accused Pakistan of harboring the “ regionally focused terrorist groups.”

“It (Pakistan) allowed groups targeting Afghanistan, including the Afghan Taliban and affiliated Haqqani Network, as well as groups targeting India, including Lashkar e-Tayyiba and its affiliated front organizations, and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), to operate from its territory,” the US State Department said in a report.

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates were the only countries to recognize the Taliban government, which had harbored bin Laden as he planned terrorist attacks against the U.S. After the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan turned and became an ally of the United States.