SEPTEMBER 11 mastermind and the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, has been killed in a US security operation in Pakistan.

12.32pm Prime Minister Julia Gillard has defended Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd against claims he jeopardised the hunt for Osama bin Laden by confirming the arrest of Bali bomber Umar Patek near bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad.

Today, she rejected the criticism that he could have put the US operation against the al-Qaeda leader at risk.

The minister acted entirely appropriately. The minister spoke about this matter after receiving advice from Australian security agencies and when it was already being comprehensively reported in the media.

10.36am Now this shows Obama's human touch. The president has promised a 14-year-old girl who lost her father in the World Trade Center attacks a meeting with Justin Bieber.

After laying a wreath at Ground Zero in New York Obama lingered to talk with several people who lost family members in the 9/11 attacks, among them Payton Wall, who had written the president a letter about her father, Glen James.

Obama meets Payton, centre, at the Ground Zero ceremony

Each day, White House staff gives Obama 10 letters from the public to read on a variety of topics, and on Monday, Payton's was in the batch. The White House invited Payton to attend the wreath-laying ceremony only to learn that her mother had no clue that her daughter had written the letter.

In her letter, Payton wrote about "the entire day (of September 11, 2001) and how I pictured it happening, and what it's like to have to live without a father."

But when she met Obama, Payton talked about another aspect of the letter: how she had originally written it for singer Justin Bieber, hoping to meet him. She decided on a whim to revise it and send it to the White House, even though her sister teased that the president would never read it.

As for the letter, Payton explains:

"I wrote to Obama about how Justin Bieber inspired me to tell my story."

The president offered comfort, but even better, he promised to pull some strings and make sure she meets the Canadian teen sensation the next time he's in town.

Read more on this here.

9.58am Here are some more pictures of President Obama's moving visit to New York.

Barack Obama pauses after laying a wreath at the National September 11 Memorial in New York. Picture: AP

Obama hugs Diane Wall, wife of Glen James Wall, who died during the World Trade Center attacks. Picture: AP

The crowds at the service captured the mixture of euphoria and sorrow in New York. Picture: AP

Click here to find out more about the visit.

9.52am Joe Hildebrand on The Punch has a lighter take on the death of Bin Laden.

He has the transcript of the last minutes of Osama bin Laden, his wife Amal and courier Abu in his Pakistani compound…

AMAL: (Sigh…) Well I guess it’s another night in.

OSAMA: What’s that supposed to mean?

AMAL: Oh nothing. It’s just that we never seem to go out anymore.

OSAMA: Honey, we’ve been through this.

AMAL: I know, I know. We just never seem to do things like we used to. Remember that night at Tora Bora?

OSAMA: The one in the cave?

For more go to The Punch.

9.18am Al-Qaeda planned to blow up trains in major American cities on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, evidence from the Bin Laden raid suggests.

Although the plan was more aspirational than concrete, it apparently mentioned trains in New York, Washington, DC and Chicago.

US sources say that al-Qaeda also considered the possibility of targeting a locomotive going at 805km/h, even no American trains - or indeed any in the world - are capable of such speeds.

The Department of Homeland Security says that Al-Qaeda apparently "contemplated" the attack in February last year.

Read more on this story here.

8.45am The story of Bin Laden's death keeps shifting so who knows how accurate this version from Fox News is.

Sources have told the US news network that Bin Laden shoved his wife toward the Navy SEAL who ultimately shot him in the head and chest. They say that he was "scared" and "completely confused".

Here's the rest of the story, which is starting to read more and more like a Tom Clancy novel:

The SEALs first shot at Bin Laden when he poked his head around the door of his bedroom - but the bullet whistled past him.

After darting back into the room, Bin Laden shoved one his wives toward an advancing SEAL in an apparent attempt to save himself. The SEALs shot the woman in the leg.

But Bin Laden was apparently within reach of two guns - an AK-47 and a Makarov hand gun. The SEALs also feared that he was wearing a suicide vest and that the house was rigged with explosives.

What is known is that none of the other four people killed in the operation were armed, although US official say there were "at least a half-dozen weapons" in the compound.

6.25am Anything the US does - good or bad - you can bet your last dollar Fidel Castro will denounce it.

He calls the death of Bin Laden an "abhorrent" assassination that would reap "hatred and vengeance" against the United States.

The former Cuban leader predicts that after an initial period of euphoria, the US public will wind up criticising the use of methods that "far from protecting citizens, ends up multiplying the feelings of hatred and vengeance against them".

Castro says Obama "has no way to hide the fact that Osama was executed in the presence of his children and wives".

"How will he prevent the women and children of the person who was executed extra-legally and without trial from explaining what happened?"

He joins the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who feels "very uncomfortable" about the killing.

"I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn't look as if justice is seen to be done."

5.30am The schoolchildren with President Bush on the morning of the World Trade Center attacks have been reminiscing about the event.

In interviews with Time magazine published this week, the children, who are now teenagers, remember Bush's sudden change in expression as he learned of the terrorist attacks.

Lazaro Dubrocq, who is now 17, tells Time:

"In a heartbeat, he leaned back and he looked flabbergasted, shocked, horrified. I was baffled. I mean, did we read something wrong? Was he mad or disappointed in us?"

Bush was reading The Pet Goat to pupils at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, when Chief of Staff Andrew Card interrupted and whispered in his ear that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. The incident was famously used in Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11. Click here to see the clip.

Critics disparaged Bush for remaining in the second-grade classroom for several minutes to finish the book after learning of the attacks. But the students defended his decision to stay.

Mariah Williams, now 16, tells Time:

"I'm just glad he didn't get up and leave, because then I would have been more scared and confused."

Read the full interviews at Time here.

4.45am President Obama's message to New York is "we will never forget".

In a highly symbolic visit, intended to bring a measure of closure to Americans still haunted by a day of death and fire on September 11, Obama placed a wreath at the site of the felled World Trade Center.

He warned that Osama bin Laden's death proved America would never fail to bring terrorists to justice.

"When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say."

Standing in a firehouse that lost 15 men on September 11, Obama said that America's "commitment to making sure that justice is done is something that transcended politics, transcended party; it didn't matter which administration was in, it didn't matter who was in charge. We were going to make sure that the perpetrators of that horrible act - that they received justice". He added:

"Those guys (who) took those extraordinary risks going into Pakistan ... they were doing it in part because of the sacrifices that were made in the States. They were doing it in the name of your brothers that were lost."

Obama also met relatives of some of the nearly 3000 people that died in the September 11 attacks.

4.00am President Obama will privately thank the Navy SEALs on the Bin Laden mission. Despite the obvious elation in America right now over the death of the world's most wanted man, the White House knows it still has a fight to convince the public of its belief that US involvement in Afghanistan is necessary.

White House press secretary Jay Carney has been reminding reporters of this in his briefings:

"The fact remains that we're still at war, that we have 100,000 combat personnel in Afghanistan, we have troops in a support-and-assist role in Iraq, and we have US military men and women in other places around the globe and, in some cases, in difficult situations. So it's important to acknowledge that, and for Americans to remember that despite the elimination of Bin Laden, we're still extremely dependent upon and grateful to our military men and women for what they do."

3.00am Kevin Rudd nearly blew the US mission against Osama bin Laden, according to Pakistan's intelligence chiefs.

The ISI intelligence agency claims that the Foreign Affairs Minister "shattered" a confidence by publicly confirming the arrest of Bali bomber and al-Qaeda acolyte Umar Patek in late March.

The ISI told The Australian that Pakistani authorities had deliberately kept secret Patek's arrest in the same town where Bin Laden was hiding for fear that "subsequent leads would all go dead".

The Australian reported yesterday that Pakistan's arrest of Patek had helped the US confirm Bin Laden's whereabouts.

Many security experts have expressed surprise that the leaking of Patek's arrest in Abbottabad did not trigger alarm bells in the Bin Laden compound.

A spokesman for ISI told The Australian just how risky Mr Rudd's announcement was:

"Information on the arrest of such people is not released for as long as possible so we have time to get his contacts because there's always a fish bigger than him. If the news gets out that this person has been arrested then all his contacts disappear. That's precisely why we did not do it but somebody else beat us to it. Your guys (Australia), in their wisdom, thought it would be good to score a point. They had no hand in his arrest. We're the ones who arrested him and we shared that information with them in confidence and that confidence we found was shattered when they immediately went public with the information."

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade dismissed the claims as "untrue and absurd".

Read more on Rudd's alleged bungle at The Australian.

2.05am US military officers have released a more detailed account of the raid, seemingly in response to the questions emerging about the raid on bin Laden's compound

Sky News is quoting a senior US official who was "bristling" as he refuted claims the compound was a "soft target" stating there were guns discovered in the compound, including two in bin Laden's room. He also hit back at criticisms that soldiers should have attempted to capture the unarmed bin Laden rather than kill him.

"When someone like bin Laden - who has stated he wants to kill as many Americans as possible - refuses to surrender you have to assess this as a threat."

1.30am A senior US defence official has stated only one of the five people killed during the raid that took down bin Laden was armed and ever fired a shot.

The official says that shooter was killed in the early minutes of the commando assault - an account that differs greatly from original reports that portrayed a chaotic, prolonged firefight amid stiff resistance.

11.00pm The fallout of OBL's death has continued to spark diverse reactions around the world.

Below, people shout anti bin Laden slogans during an Afghan government opposition rally in Kabul. Some analysts are speculating that al-Qaeda and its Afghan Taliban allies could go their separate ways. Picture: AP

Below, former Pakistani lawmaker and leader of a religious party Maulana Noor Mohammad addresses a rally to condemn the killing of Osama bin Laden in Quetta, Pakistan. Picture: AP

Palestinians hold pictures depicting bin Laden, as they march to celebrate the signing of a surprise reconciliation deal between bitter rivals Hamas and Fatah. Picture: AFP

In Indonesia, workers are busily producing T-shirts featuring Osama bin Laden. These ones being made at a shop in Surabaya will sell for about $7 each. Picture: AFP

10.46pm Gasp! It was not shock but allergies that caused Hillary Clinton's expression in the now iconic White House photo taken during the deadly raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout.

The US secretary of state has told reporters in Rome she could not remember what she was watching on the TV screen in the Situation Room, along with President Obama and his national security team, at the exact moment the snap was taken but admitted, "those were 38 of the most intense minutes."



But, she said, they should not read too much into her expression.

I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early spring allergic coughs. So, it may have no great meaning whatsoever.

10.01pm Pakistan has warned the US of "disastrous consequences" if it carries out any more unauthorised raids against suspected terrorists like the one that killed Osama bin Laden.

9.44pm The leader of the world's Anglicans, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, says he's "very uncomfortable" Osama bin Laden was killed while unarmed.

I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn't look as if justice is seen to be done. In those circumstances I think it's also true that the different versions of events that have emerged in recent days have not done a great deal to help.

9.21pm UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has called for "a full disclosure of the accurate facts" to determine the legality of bin Laden's killing. Read more.

I'm still for a full disclosure of the accurate facts. I think it's not just my office but anybody is entitled to know exactly what happened.

8.26pm US troops were led to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by his own deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri (pictured below), because of a simmering internal power struggle, Saudi newspaper Al-Watan has reported.

The paper quotes an unnamed "regional source" saying the top two Al-Qaeda men had differences and a courier who led US forces to bin Laden was working for Zawahiri and knew he was being followed by the US military but disguised the fact.

7.44pm Bin Laden's final hiding place seems likely to become a macabre tourist spot unless the military destroys the compound, which is attracting hundreds of visitors a day. Locals are divided over what to do with the site.



Local resident Mohammed Fayaz, 32, fears militant attacks as OBL followers flock to the site:

It is a monument now. The whole world will come to see it. This could be dangerous for us because anything could happen.

District administration chief aheer ul-Islam said authorities would not prevent visitors to the site. But he said:

It can never become a shrine or a visiting place for Osama bin Laden's supporters because they know that this is a highly sensitive area and neither the military nor us will allow such activity.

Professor Khurshid Ahmed, vice president of the Pakistani Islamist political party Jamaat-i-Islami, suggests fears about a shrine missed the point:

It's not a question of place, it's a question of idea. Whether we like it or not, Osama has become a symbol, for good or worse.

Head of police at the site Ghulam Abbas hopes it will be used for a more practical purpose:

Some say it should be closed forever, others that is should be demolished. My opinion is that it should be converted into a school.

6.37pm Richard Marcinko created Seal Team Six after the failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt in 1979, and now feels like a "proud papa" of the team that took down bin Laden.

6.21pm Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says he has no desire to see a photo of bin Laden. He says it's inevitable conspiracy theorists would come up with theories, just as had happened over the death of US President John F. Kennedy and the disappearance of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt.

I know that there will always be a few people who will say it was all a terrible plot. There are some people who think the whole 9/11 was a terrible conspiracy. But I think we are entitled to be convinced, to be satisfied that Osama is no more, that he was found by this US special forces mission. We can be quietly satisfied that the worst terrorist in the world's history has finally met justice.

6.08pm Pakistan's army chief is meeting with top commanders to discuss the US raid that killed bin Laden.

The Pakistani army has so far not explained when and how it learned about the operation, or why it didn't take any action against the incursion of helicopters, which officials from both countries say took off from neighbouring Afghanistan.

5.00pm President Obama's refusal to release photographic evidence of bin Laden's death hasn't stopped photos purporting to show bin Laden's corpse going viral.

So how do you tell a fake picture?

Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at Dartmouth University who specialises in forensic photographic image analysis, examined one of the pictures and explained the obvious sign it was a fake:

In today's world where even the cheapest cameras are a few megapixels in resolution, it doesn't make sense why such an important image would only be available at this very low resolution.

Read more about the fake OBL death pictures going viral.

4.30pm New Zealand politician Hone Harawira has apologised after calling on people to acknowledge the positive aspects of Osama bin Laden, saying his comments were not meant to express support for bin Laden's actions.

This was a mistake and was not intended. Using terror for political reasons is never acceptable. I apologise for how I expressed myself.

3.03pm As Barack Obama put his foot down on releasing an image to prove bin Laden's death, he said: "There are going to be some folks who deny it. The fact of the matter is you won't see bin Laden walking on this earth again."

But these pictures might have you doing a double-take. Meet Hasmet Hichster Londono, who resembles, admires and, for the past seven years, has dressed like the al-Qaeda leader. Here he is in his local Sante Fe neighborhood in Bogota, Colombia.

2.41pm As US commandos swooped on OBL's suburban fortress and killed him, the head of Pakistan's military was in Canberra for top level defence and security talks. General Khalid Shameem Wynne met heads of national security agencies, joined a roundtable discussion at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and called on Defence Minister Stephen Smith.

1.05pm Bin Laden is alive and well and living in Graceland. Well, maybe not, Tory Shepherd writes at The Punch, but at the very least, something's a bit fishy about this case. Her piece includes a handy list to five reasons to have doubts.

It took mere cyber seconds – in this crazy interweb-connected world of ours – for people to start speculating that Osama was not dead at all, the whole extravaganza just concocted to boost Obama’s election chances. Or an alien plot. Or something.

12.12pm Australian PM Julia Gillard is likely to speak to US President Barack Obama about the killing of Osama bin Laden in the next week.



US ambassador Jeff Bleich says the president "is looking forward to speaking with her".

11.54pm New Zealand's most controversial politician independent Kiwi MP Hone Harawira says we "can't ignore" the positive aspects of the terrorist's life:

We have heard nothing but negative things about him from the Americans, but he fought for the self-determination of his people and for his beliefs. Indeed, despite what the media has said, his family, his tribe, his people are in mourning. They mourn for the man who fought for the rights, the lands and the freedom of his people. We should not damn them in death but acknowledge the positive aspects of life.

11.45am Photos of Osama bin Laden's death are confusing even when you are a senior US politician.

Senator Scott Brown, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is admitting he had been fooled by a fake photograph of Bin Laden. He earlier told several TV interviewers that he had seen an authentic picture as part of an official briefing.

He argued the image should not be released to the public because it was too graphic and may incite reprisals:

"Listen, I've seen the picture. He's definitely dead. And if there's any conspiracy theories out there, you should put them to rest."

He later put out a one-sentence statement explaining he had been duped by a fake photograph, The Boston Globe reports.

"The photo that I saw and that a lot of other people saw is not authentic."

He isn't telling who showed him the fake photo, why he believed it was authentic, nor why he had suggested he had seen it as part of an official briefing.

11.00am The New York Times has gauged America's reaction to Osama bin Laden's death and produced this fascinating mosaic (see it here). Here's what the paper says about the interactive:

We asked readers the following questions: Was his death significant in our war against terror? And do you have a negative or positive view of this event? Readers — 13,864 of them — answered by plotting a response on the graph and adding a comment to explain the choice. Each light blue dot represents one comment. Darker shades represent multiple comments made on a single point.

Here's a screen grab.

Click here for previous coverage