Pakistan Air Forces (PAF) has strictly dismissed the reports that its radars were inactive during entry of American helicopters into Pakistani air space for Operation Geronimo on May 2.
Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who had evaded capture for a decade, was killed in a top secret operation involving a team of US Special Forces in Abbottabad city, located 50 kilometres northeast of Islamabad and 150 kilometres east of Peshawar.
PAF spokesman Air Commodore, Tariq Qamar Yazdani termed ‘baseless’ and ‘untrue’ all such reports that PAF’s radars were inactive or jammed by the US forces.
“There should not be any suspicion about performance of our equipments,” he said.
Earlier, the PAF’s Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman, accepted the responsibility of air surveillance failure, but dispelled the impression that the Pakistani radars had been jammed by Americans.
Suleman informed the government that the entry of US helicopters into the Pakistani air space was not detected, as the radars deployed on the western borders were inactive on that day.
Suleman’s statement was in direct contrast to what Pakistan Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir had said during a media briefing in Islamabad on May 5.
Pak radars were active during US operation: PAF
