FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Robert O'Neill describes the night of May 2, 2011, and the secret US operation to eliminate the Al Qaeda leader...
Inside the apartment, plunged into darkness, Robert O'Neill moved around, seeing the spaces only through his night vision device.
He was one of the elite members of Seal Team 6, selected to locate and eliminate Saudi Osama Bin Laden, whom the CIA had managed to identify.
The Al Qaeda leader, considered primarily responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks, was hiding in a fortified compound on the outskirts of Abbottabad in Pakistan.
After months of careful investigation and tracking of specific individuals, and with the key role of a persistent analyst, the CIA concluded that the most wanted terrorist in the world was in that apartment.
Then an "invisible" unit of SEAL special forces intervened, the existence of which was known to very few people until the night of Monday, May 2, 2011.
Special forces took off from a base in Afghanistan in three stealth helicopters, invisible to radar, after President Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for Operation Poseidon Spear. With the landing near the compound, the decisive phase began.
eXECUTION
Robert O'Neill was among the first to climb the stairs with other commandos to find Bin Laden in one of the many rooms. When a door was broken open, he scanned the space with his night vision device and spotted a familiar figure.
"I saw Bin Laden. He looked tense and was taller than I expected. I shot him twice in the forehead. He fell to the floor in front of the bed and I shot him again," he later said.
After the strikes, the Al Qaeda leader was left lifeless on the spot. The full account of the operation was made public years later.
That night, O'Neill earned the nickname "The Shooter," although other members of the unit have claimed the same role. He himself has stated that he was simply doing his job.
Two years after the surgery, in an interview with Esquire magazine, he said: "I was asked if what I did was the best or worst thing of my life."
Initially, the identities of the participants in the operation were to remain secret, but the great media interest led to some of them being made public. Another commando, Matt Bissonnette, claimed to be the one who killed Bin Laden and published a book, causing reactions within the military ranks.
O'Neill kept his identity a secret for three years, until 2014, when he made it public in a Fox documentary.
Life after surgery
Before speaking publicly, he had given an anonymous interview to journalist Phil Bronstein in Esquire. This interview took dozens of meetings until O'Neill agreed to confess.
He spoke about the insecurities after leaving the special forces, about his low pension, and about his personal life, including separation from his wife and uncertainty about his future outside the military.
By the night of the operation, he had participated in more than ten special missions and killed over 30 people, according to his account.
After returning from the mission, he gave the CIA analyst who had contributed to discovering Bin Laden's location his gun's magazine, from which the three bullets used during the operation were missing.
The film “ Zero Dark Thirty ,” which deals with this operation, was considered one of the closest representations to reality. When a relative asked him if he had seen the film before, his answer was short: “I saw the original.” / Adapted from “Protothema”
Te gjitha veprimet sa u tha me siper jane genjeshtra me bisht, sepse jane sekrete te rendesise se vecante. Psh Englezet kane nje politike qe i hapin letrat pas 40 vitesh per media e terre verr verr. Amerikanet nuk kemi degjuar t'i nxjerrin persona e ngjarje te se shkuares ne pazar. Ketyre lloj ngjarjeve ne te gjithe sherbimet sekrete e speciale te botes u vihet kapak me shume dryna e celsat hidhen ne det. Tjeter gje, kujt i intereson se si u vra, kush e vrau e si e vrau, e vrau vertet apo jo X ose Y.