In Pakistan Senior Pakistani officials disseminated the theory that no firefight ever took place, and that whomever the U.S. forces captured, they executed him outside the compound, and took his body away on a helicopter.
Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), stated in an interview with
CNN that he believed Bin Laden had died many years ago, and that the official death story given out by the American media was a hoax. Furthermore, he thinks the American government knew about Bin Laden's death for years, "They must have known that he had died some years ago so they were waiting. They were keeping this story on the ice and they were looking for an appropriate moment and it couldn't be a better moment because President Obama had to fight off his first salvo in his next year's election as he runs for the presidential and for the White House and I think it is a very appropriate time to come out, bring this out of the closet." Bashir Qureshi, who lives close to the compound where Bin Laden was shot and whose windows were blown out in the raid, was dismissive. "Nobody believes it. We've never seen any Arabs around here, he was not here."
In Iran A number of Iranians said they believed that Bin Laden was working with the U.S. during the entire war on terror. Ismail Kosari, an Iranian MP, said that Bin Laden "was just a puppet controlled by the
Zionist regime in order to present a violent image of Islam after the
September 11 attacks", and that his death "reflects the passing of a temporary US pawn, and symbolizes the end of one era and the beginning of another in American policy in the region". Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said "I have exact information that bin Laden was held by the American military for sometime... until the day they killed him he was a prisoner held by them," in a live interview on Iranian state television.
Seymour Hersh On May 21, 2015,
Pulitzer prize winning journalist
Seymour Hersh published a 10,000 word report (later a book -
The Killing of Osama bin Laden) challenging most aspects of the
official account of Osama's death. Among other things, the report claims that the Pakistani
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had kept bin Laden under house arrest at Abbottabad since 2006, and that when the US discovered this, Pakistani Army chief
Pervez Kayani and ISI director
Ahmad Shuja Pasha helped the U.S. in killing, not capturing Bin Laden. increased US anger over the refusal of Pakistan to exert pressure on the Taliban and Haqqani group; the death of 40 Pakistanis including many civilians and later 24 Pakistani soldiers from US drone strikes, the cut off of US supplies to Afghanistan by Pakistan.
Zach Dorfman, in the
Los Angeles Times, called Hersh's judgment about the veracity of his sources "mixed, at best" while acknowledging "the danger of a regime of excessive secrecy in international affairs [...] of which Hersh is rightly and acutely aware". (Rashid, Anthony, and Dorfman were also skeptical of another theory expounded in Hersh's book—that the
Ghouta chemical attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians were instigated not by the Syrian government, but by rebels aided by Turkey working as
agents provocateurs, blaming the Syrian government in hopes of forcing the Obama administration to enter the war against the government.)
Internet Facebook groups formed discussing a rumor, in what has been dubbed the "death hoax". Some blogs theorised that the raid and killing were faked, in a conspiracy to attempt to deflect questions about
President Obama's citizenship, or to boost Obama's approval ratings and guarantee his popularity during the
2012 U.S. presidential election.
Anti-war activist
Cindy Sheehan stated "If you believe the newest death of OBL, you're stupid". On
Russia Today, radio host
Alex Jones claimed that Bin Laden had been dead for nearly ten years, and that his body had been kept in liquid nitrogen so that it can be used as a propaganda tool at a future politically expedient time. He claimed that in 2002 an anonymous White House source had told him that Bin Laden "is frozen, literally frozen and that he would be rolled out in the future at some date". Jones also pointed to similar comments made by former Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright in 2003, "Yes we have been told by intelligence that they've got him, Bush may roll him out but because they exposed that at the election they didn't do it". Jones further voiced doubts about the official story of bin Laden's death on his radio show telling his listeners, "My friends, this is a complete and total hoax." An article in
Mediaite criticized Napolitano's remarks, opining that "such conspiracy talk is ultimately beneath Napolitano and his often enlightened discussions." Canadian deputy Leader of the Opposition and MP,
Thomas Mulcair, stated in an interview with
CBC Television that "I don't think from what I've heard that those pictures [of bin Laden's body] exist". His remarks were picked up by dozens of U.S. media outlets, and criticized by various Canadian politicians. An official statement from the
Taliban stated that the lack of photos or video footage is suspicious, as their own sources close to Bin Laden had not confirmed or denied his death, and that "when the Americans killed
Mullah Dadullah (Taliban's chief military commander) they publicly showed the footage". In October 2020, then-U.S. President
Donald Trump retweeted an article which claimed that the Osama that was killed in the raid wasn't him but was actually a body double. Several news agencies and intelligence agencies reported his death as being before 9/11 or shortly after from renal failure. Western intelligence reports stated Bin Laden was seriously ill with kidney and liver disease. Bin Laden, who suffered from renal deficiency, had been periodically undergoing dialysis in a Peshawar military hospital with the knowledge and approval of the Inter-Services Intelligence, (ISI) if not of Gen. Pervez Musharraf himself. Bin Laden is alleged to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department. While there he was allegedly visited by several members of his family and Saudi personalities, and the CIA. In December 2001 the New York Times reported that he was likely dead. In late 2001 or early 2002, Bin Laden's "Death Video" was released that month, after reports of Bin Laden's funeral, a new video appeared, depicting a gaunt, sickly Osama bin Laden. The London Telegraph reported, "The recording was dismissed by the Bush administration yesterday as sick propaganda, possibly designed to mask the fact the al-Qa'eda leader was already dead." In July 2002, CNN reported that Bin Laden's close bodyguards were captured in February 2002, but not bin Laden. The article also quoted high-level officials: "Some high-level U.S. officials are already convinced by such evidence that bin Laden, who has not been seen or heard from in months, is dead." In October 2002, intelligence officials alleged Bin Laden was dead, and his will was released. Also in October 2002, the
Washington D.C.-based news service The World Tribune, citing Israeli intelligence sources, reported that the United States and Israel have concluded that bin Laden died in Afghanistan in December 2001. They noted that additional bin Laden messages are "probably fabrications," and that bin Laden's heir had been chosen. Intelligence officials allegedly obtained Osama bin Laden's will, which was dated December 14, 2001, though they were unable to ascertain its validity. CNN also reported that there has been no evidence of Bin Laden since December 2001. In 2004, the
LA Times quotes Donald Rumsfeld as admitting: "We've not seen him [bin Laden] on a video since 2001." In 2006, the New York Times reported the CIA had officially closed down the unit focused on capturing Bin Laden the previous year, with the unit being folded into the broader Counterterrorist Center. In 2006, U.S. and Pakistani officials said they have not received any information about Bin Laden in years: "no tips from informants, no snippets from electronic intercepts, no points on any satellite image." The article rehashes the December 2001 video of Bin Laden as the most recent evidence (other than a second-hand claim from 2003) of Bin Laden's existence. == Related conspiracy theories ==