The US plan to kill Osama bin Laden’s successor has been revealed by a government official.
Details on how the C.I.A located and managed to exterminate its leader al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, in a US airstrike in Kabul, a government official said, after the Biden speech.
Zawahri was in hiding for years and the operation to locate and exterminate him was the result “careful, patient and persistent» of work by US counterterrorism and intelligence officials, a senior US government official said.
As of this US announcement, the Egyptian doctor was said to be either in the semi-autonomous tribal areas in Pakistan, or somewhere in Afghanistan.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the US official provided the following details on the planning and execution of the operation:
* For years, the US authorities were aware of her existence of a network he believed supported Zawahri. For the past year, after the US military withdrew from Afghanistan, US intelligence agencies have been looking for clues as to whether and where the al Qaeda leader was in the country.
This year, his family was located: his wife, his daughter and her children. They had settled in hideout in Kabul. Then, they traced Ayman al-Zawahri himself to this house in the Afghan capital.
* For several months, intelligence officials had been increasingly confident that they had located Zawahri in the Kabul hideout, and in early April they briefed senior government officials. President Biden was then informed by the national security adviser of the American presidency, Mr Jake Sullivan.
“We were able to ascertain how they lived“the tenants of the house”through many independent sources“, the US official explained.
After Zawahri arrived at the hideout in Kabul, US intelligence found that he was not leaving it, but he went out to the balcony -the target of the blow- repeatedly.
* Officials studied her construction and the natural environment of the hideout and how its occupants moved within it to ensure that an operation to kill Zawahri could be carried out without threatening the structural integrity of the building and minimizing the risk to his family members and other civilians.
* In recent weeks the American president he was meeting with his advisers and ministers to arrive at the course of action. On July 1, Mr. Biden was briefed on the details of the proposed operation in the so-called Situation Room by members of his administration and the director of US intelligence, William Burns.
He asked questions about the light conditions, the weather, the materials with which the house was constructed and other factors that could determine the success of the operation, according to the US official. He also asked to be presented with an analysis of the possible impact of the strike on Kabul.
* A small circle of legal advisers from various agencies reviewed the CIA intelligence and confirmed that Zawahri was a legitimate target, given that he remained the leader of al-Qaeda. On July 25, the US president Biden called a meeting of key members of his administration and advisers to get the latest update and discuss with them how killing the al Qaeda leader would affect Washington’s relationship with the Taliban, among other things, according to the official. After hearing the views of his ministers and advisers, Mr. Biden approved the proposal to conducted “precision air strike” provided that the risk of civilian casualties would be minimized.
* The strike was carried out at 21:48 Saturday (US time; 04:48 Sunday Greek time) by UAV armed with Hellfire missiles.
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