The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is celebrating the 9th anniversary of the raid on a compound in Pakistan that led to the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May, 2011.
The operation dubbed "Geronimo" took ten months of preparation. Former US President Barack Obama ordered the execution on April 29, 2011 and it was carried out four days later by the Navy SEALs on May 2.
Bin Laden was hiding in a residential compound with his two wives and assistants, in the northwest of Abbottabad, according to the CIA.
On September 26, 2001, the first CIA force entered Afghanistan, 15 days after September 11 attacks, which killed more than 3,000 people and al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for. By November, there was a total of 100 CIA officers and 300 from the United States Army Special Forces in Afghanistan.
Under the CIA leadership and with the support of partners from the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the US agencies were collecting data on bin Laden’s whereabouts. Intelligence information managed to find out where he was hiding, protected by two of his closest assistants.
The raid meant to target his location with the least risk of civilians getting killed. His death marked a significant victory in the US-led campaign to fight terrorism around the world and to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida.
Previously published reports revealed that the CIA had followed him from the time he fled to the Tora Bora in Afghanistan and until disclosing the identity of his courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti along with the four-wheel drive in 2010 in Peshawar.
In its zeal to identify bin Laden or his family, the CIA used a sham hepatitis B vaccination project to collect DNA in the neighborhood where he was hiding. The US intelligence plan was to obtain a blood sample from one of the children living in the Abbottabad compound, so that DNA tests could determine whether or not they were relatives of him.
The Pakistani authorities, therefore, arrested doctor Shakil Afridi who remain behind bars until today. Afridi was the top medic in Khyber tribal district and as head of health services had overseen a number of US-funded vaccination programs.
It's thought that one of Dr Afridi's staff visited the compound and collected blood - but it's not known whether this proved central to the Americans' success in locating their target.
In January 2012, US officials publicly admitted that Afridi had worked for US intelligence. But it's far from clear how much he knew about his role for the CIA. He said nothing to this effect during his deposition at the Abbottabad Commission into the killing.
