Osama Bin Laden ‘blew himself up with suicide belt’: former bodyguard

Osama Bin Laden was not shot dead by Navy SEALs but instead blew himself up with a suicide belt, the terror leader’s former bodyguard has claimed.

In a claim that counters previous reports, Nabeel Naeem Abdul Fattah said that the al-Qaeda chief triggered his explosive belt when U.S. Special Forces broke into his compound, killed two of his guards and shot him in the thigh as part of ‘Operation Geronimo’.

Speaking in an interview, Abdul Fattah conceded he had not been present at the time of Bin Laden’s death but instead was told ‘what had happened’ from one of the terror leader’s relatives.

The account of Bin Laden’s death at his Abbotabad compound on May 2, 2011 is being seen as the latest in a string of propaganda by his supporters.

Abdul Fattah told Gulf News he found the official story about the leader’s burial at sea ‘fishy’ and accused US President Barack Obama of lying.

He said: ‘Bin Laden’s body parts were cut into multiple pieces, which is similar to suicide attacks following the bombing so as not to leave any clue to the US forces to identify him.’

Abdul Fattah said he had blown himself up to avoid capture and to ‘keep his secrets’ until death.

Abdul Fattah claimed that Bin Laden had been wearing an explosive belt over the last ten years of his life. He was adamant he would not ‘give himself up’ to the Americans, he added.

There have been several accounts of the final hours of the terror leader’s death.

Just after midnight on the morning of May 2, 2011, 23 commandos and their interpreter attacked Bin Laden’s compound. They shot and killed his two bodyguards, one of his sons and the wife of one bodyguard.

The first three soldiers to reach the top floor of the house, where Bin Laden’s bedroom was believed to be, were ‘the point man’, ‘the shooter’ whom magazine Esquire profiled, and the now-famous Matt Bissonnette, another Team 6 member, whose account was published in best-selling book No Easy Day, which was written under the pseudonym Mark Owen.

All of these previous three accounts are in agreement.

The Shooter told Esquire that Bin Laden peered through his bedroom door and the point man shot at and either missed or lightly wounded him, before tackling two women nearby.

The Shooter claims he then ran alone into the room where he found Bin Laden hiding behind one of his wives, perhaps using her as a human shield. Seeing a gun ‘within reach’ he shot the Islamist twice in the head.

Another account emerged in March, which claimed that the point man shot and gravely wounded Bin Laden.

CNN security analyst Peter Bergen reported that the point man then leapt on the two nearby women – to absorb any explosion in case they were wearing suicide vests.

Then two more SEALs went into Bin Laden’s bedroom and, seeing he was mortally wounded, finished him off.

The account is similar to that given in No Easy Day, where Bissonnette says he was one of the first in the room, saw Bin Laden close to death, then finished him off as he lay on the floor.