![]() ![]() The intelligence reports, compiled by officials at Guantanamo Bay, suggest that the real series of events was remarkably different from what was reported around the world at the time. This week, new files leaked from the U.S. Unfortunately, unlike in the movies, the villain managed to slip away, and Bin Laden was reported to have escaped to Pakistan, just as he had planned. There were reports of Victoria Crosses about to be awarded, and hundreds of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters being shot by lantern-jawed SAS and troops from Delta Force - a secretive counter-terrorism unit which is part of the U.S. On the attack: Canadian troops were deployed in the Tora Bora valley region as part of the allied attempt to capture Bin Laden According to most accounts, Tora Bora was assaulted by hundreds of American and British Special Forces, who fought cave-to-cave in battles straight out of a war movie. What happened next - the Battle of Tora Bora and Bin Laden’s subsequent escape - has become the stuff of legend. However, the CIA was close behind and, thanks to informers, by early December the Americans were confident Bin Laden was hiding in his mountain lair. Years later, his son Omar bin Laden recalled: ‘My brothers and I all loathed these treks that seemed the most pleasant of outings to our father.’Īccording to some intelligence reports, Bin Laden had been hiding in Tora Bora since around November 17, when he and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri had slipped out of the nearby city of Jalalabad. In preparation, Bin Laden had spent hundreds of hours exploring the area on foot, much to the annoyance of some of his 11 sons, forced to accompany their father on his gruelling 14-hour treks. ![]() Furthermore, as Tora Bora was just a few miles from Pakistan, he would easily be able to escape as Western troops closed in. ‘I feel really secure in the mountains,’ he told a Palestinian journalist in 1996, and he had good reason.īin Laden knew that if the Americans managed to track him down, his hideout - so high up in the almost impenetrable mountains - would be hard to attack on foot, while the deepness of the caves protected him from the air.īin Laden knew that if the Americans managed to track him down, his hideout - so high up in the almost impenetrable mountains - would be hard to attack on foot, while the deepness of the caves protected him from the air. For several years, Bin Laden had developed an intricate network of caves and dwellings 14,000ft up in the White Mountains, in a settlement known as Tora Bora. ![]() could truly claim that it was winning the newly declared War Against Terror.Īlthough Operation Enduring Freedom - a military incursion by thousands of Nato and Afghan troops - was successfully liberating much of Afghanistan from Taliban control, there was no doubt that the real prize was Bin Laden himself.īut the head of Al Qaeda had chosen his redoubt with care. If Bin Laden could be captured or killed, the terrorists would be dealt a massive blow, and the U.S. Since the devastating Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington just three months before, the United States had been tracking him down, and now, in mid-December 2001, they were no more than a few miles away. Wanted: But Osama Bin Laden proved difficult to track down in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan ![]()
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