Bin Laden Son Killed in Pakistan

U.S. officials believe Saad bin Laden — a son of Osama bin Laden — has been killed by an American missile in Pakistan.

Saad bin Laden reportedly spent years under house arrest in Iran before traveling last year to Pakistan, according to former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

It's believed he was killed by Hellfire missiles fired from a U.S. Predator drone sometime this year.

I agree, Saad was spotted with his entourage in March in Swat and has been very, very careful to stay out of drone areas.

There has been no AQ elint traffic about his possible demise, which would be very unlikely for someone second in command to AQ.

Saad has disappeared, true, but so has Gadahn, and we know he is alive.

I remain skeptical and lean towards the bin Ladens having gone to Yemen.

...and I agree with you and Yemen is a possibility...southern Yemen, seems to be more active, gandalfb only from what I see on the internet — no first hand knowledge.

There was an interesting little video with Hamza bin Laden in September 2008 and I wondered though, if maybe UBL symbolically was either introducing Hamza formally as a bin Laden jihadi and/or if Hamza was replacing someone. I don’t know.

Hamza at the time was too young to step up to AQ leadership. Saad has been portrayed as a minor player in AQ, which is nonsense, he was second in command after Zawahiri and managed all UBL and Z communications. His loss would be quickly noticed by us.

Frankly, we were offered Saad and Zarqawi back in 2003 by the Iranians if we would give up the MEK Iranian rebels that we captured in Iraq. We could have unraveled AQ and saved a lot of soldiers lives if we had. To preserve our covert ops on Iran, we passed on Saad, not something you would do for a "minor player" as Saad is called.

Targeted Assassinations [Mona Charen]
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWRmZTdlYmIxMDRhOTIxYzgwZmI5OTY2Y2Q2YTE2Yzc=

“From the AP:

Bin Laden son may have been killed

Saad bin Laden, a son of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, may have been killed in a U.S. airstrike, U.S. officials said Thursday. The son was likely killed in Pakistan in the last several months, approximately in late spring, said a counterterrorism official, one of three Obama administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.”

This is shocking. The Obama Administration is carrying out a secret policy of targeted assassinations. They are going after Al Qaeda suspects. Was Congress thoroughly briefed on the details of this hit — time, date, plan of attack? — before the drones were deployed? This is an obvious violation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the 2008 Democratic Party Platform.

We need hearings and a special prosecutor.

Note:Photo included.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/07/pakistani_jihadis_de.php

“Pakistani jihadis deny Osama bin Laden’s son killed”
By BILL ROGGIO
July 24, 2009 8:22 AM

SNIPPET: “Pakistani terrorists with close links to al Qaeda denied that Osama bin Laden’s son was killed in a US airstrike earlier this year.

“Taliban and Punjabi militant commanders” who are in “close association with Arabs” told The News that while the US air campaign has hit the terror network hard, Osama’s son Sa’ad bin Laden was neither killed nor wounded during strikes this year. The commanders did not disclose their names.

“There is no doubt that we lost some of our well-trained and senior people in the US drone attacks in tribal areas, but I can say for sure that Sheikh Osama and his family members were never hurt in any of these strikes,” one Pakistani Taliban commander said.

“Had Sa’ad or anybody else of his family been injured or killed anywhere in Pakistan and Afghanistan, at least we would have been aware of that,” a Punjabi extremist leader told the news agency. The Punjabi commander said he is responsible for looking after wounded Arab fighters, and said his friends had recently met with Sa’ad.

“If they [the US] were true in their claim, they should provide accurate information when and where they killed Sa’ad,” the Punjabi commander continued.

The jihadi commanders said Sa’ad was not a senior leader in al Qaeda, but then went on to say he is leading al Qaeda fighters in battle in Afghanistan.

US intelligence officials told The Long War Journal on July 22 that it was highly likely that Sa’ad was killed in a strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas earlier this year. The officials would not disclose the location or the date of Sa’ad’s death, nor did they indicate they were in possession of his remains.”

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