The Abbottabad Commission probing the May 2 incursion into Pakistan by US Special Forces on an alleged hideout of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad has missed its deadline of May 2012 to finalise its report and it appears the report is unlikely to be completed by July due to “unhelpful” attitude by former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Osama bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011, by Navy SEALs of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, also known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team Six. The operation was ordered by US President Barack Obama and was carried out in a Central Intelligence Agency-led operation. The five-member commission, headed by former senior judge of the apex court Javed Iqbal, was reconstituted on June 21, 2011, and despite lapse of over a year, the commission has failed to finalise its report. A spokesperson of the commission told media on May 2 this year that the report would be finalised on May 21 and it would be submitted to Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry within a week after it is finalised. But till date, the commission has failed to do so.
“The report could not be finalised and is unlikely to be finalised by next month as well because Yousaf Raza Gilani did not submit his response to the commission. Though the new prime minister has also been issued a notice, we are yet to receive a response from him,” a source in the commission told Pakistan Today. The source added that the commission wanted to get input from the then chief executive of the country as other stakeholders had given their input about the matter. However, he added, the former PM did not respond. “Other than the prime minister, the commission had also sent its questionnaire to CIA, which has also not responded,” the source added.
Reportedly, the commission had questioned Gilani why he had authorised the then Pakistan Ambassador to US Husain Haqqani through his principal secretary, Nargis Sethi, to issue visas to 4,000 Americans bypassing scrutiny process by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and other related organs of the state.
The questionnaire had suggested that the US spies could not have dared to move freely in Pakistan had PM Gilani acted on the advice of the Pakistan Army and the ISI and refrained from issuing visas to thousands of officials of private US security and intelligence agencies.
The commission has already completed its process and it has inspected the place of the incident while views of experts and statements of various officials involved with the investigation have already been received.The commission has recorded statements of the heads of military and civil intelligence agencies, Director General Military Operations, former ambassador of Pakistan to Washington, present and former foreign ministers and foreign secretaries, and the family members of Osama bin Laden and other people killed in the operation. The commission has also held interactions with some politicians who had provided the commission some useful material.