US releases documents seized from house in northern Pakistan where special forces found Bin Laden and shot him dead

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Osama bin Laden was planning a new wave of attacks and a media campaign in the US just days before he was killed by US Navy Seals in May 2011, documents released by US authorities reveal.

The papers were selected from huge quantities of material seized by the US special forces team from the house in the northern Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad where they found Bin Laden and shot him dead.

The extremist leader had been living in Abbottabad for about five years with two wives, several children and a number of grandchildren when he was killed in the raid.

Previous releases of documents have revealed Bin Laden’s reading list, as well as details of his austere and claustrophobic domestic life.

These latest documents show that despite diminishing capabilities and the loss of dozens of senior militants, Bin Laden and his aides planned a media campaign to mark the 10th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the documents show.

The al-Qaida senior leadership also plotted a diplomatic strategy and discussed climate change and the US financial collapse.

In an undated letter “To the American people”, Bin Laden ridicules Barack Obama for failing to end the war in Afghanistan, and accurately predicts that the US president’s plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will fail.

On 28 April 2011, just four days before his death, Bin Laden was editing a document he had written on the revolutions dubbed the Arab spring, which the Saudi-born ideologue and organiser had welcomed.

Along with other senior militants in the organisation, Bin Laden, who was 54 when he died, urged ambitious attacks on the US.

“We need to extend and develop our operations in America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes,” says a letter, apparently written by Bin Laden, to Nasir al-Wuhayshi, head of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap), the group’s affiliate in Yemen.

Al-Wuhayshi was a favourite of Bin Laden’s and had already launched a series of attempts to stage mass casualty attacks in the west that had focused on downing passenger planes.

One narrowly failed in December 2009 when a Nigerian recruited by Aqap was unable to detonate a device in a plane as it approached Detroit.

Bin Laden “was still sort of thinking in very kind of grand schemes, and still … trying to reclaim that 9/11 ‘victory’”, said one of the senior intelligence officials, speaking to Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity.

But he was “somewhat out of touch with the [actual] capabilities of his organisation,” the official said.

Ayman al’Zawahiri, the Egyptian militant who would take over the leadership of al-Qaida after Bin Laden was killed, would move the organisation away from high-profile international attacks and towards a strategy more focused on local militant groups around the Islamic world that could seize territory.

The documents show the continuing challenges faced by al-Qaida as the group struggled to find capable personnel and resources for operations abroad.

One associate, probably Atiyah abd al-Rahman, a veteran Libyan militant who was close to Bin Laden, acknowledged troubles replacing an ineffective leader for external operations, saying some of the best candidates were dead.

“There are new brothers, perhaps some would be suitable in the future, but not now,” he wrote to his boss in 2009.

Al-Rahman was killed by a drone strike in Pakistan close to the Afghan frontier three months after the death of Bin Laden.

Reuters and US TV network ABC Television were given exclusive access to the 113 documents, which were translated from Arabic and declassified by US intelligence agencies. Many more have yet to be released.

Many add little to what was already known about the group’s final years but underline al-Qaida’s pre-occupation with security.

The group were particularly concerned by the threat from tracking devices that would enable drone strikes, and infiltration by spies.

Earlier documents found in Abbottabad and released by US authorities have included orders from Bin Laden telling lieutenants not to communicate by email or gather in large groups, lest they become a target.

The concern may have been merited – the US and its allies conduct extensive electronic surveillance on al-Qaida and other Islamic militant groups.

Western security sources at the time spoke of “very creative espionage” directed at the organisation and how drone strikes had “hollowed out” the organisation.

Bin Laden was finally located when couriers carrying messages from the Abbottabad house were identified and followed by the CIA.

Abu Abdallah al-Halabi – identified by the US Treasury as a name used by Bin Laden’s son-in law, Muhammad Abdallah Hasan Abu-Al-Khayr – writes in one letter about intercepting messages of “spies” in Pakistan, whom he said would facilitate airstrikes on al-Qaida operatives by marking cars with infrared streaks that could be seen with night vision equipment.

In another document, Bin Laden expresses alarm over his wife’s visit to a dentist while in Iran, worrying that a tracking chip could have been implanted with her dental filling. “The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli,” he wrote.

The letter ended with this instruction: “Please destroy this letter after reading it.”

In one document, Bin Laden issues instructions to al-Qaida members holding an Afghan hostage to be wary of possible tracking technology attached to the ransom payment. “It is important to get rid of the suitcase in which the funds are delivered, due to the possibility of it having a tracking chip in it,” Bin Laden states in a letter to an aide.

In an apparent reference to armed US drones patrolling the skies, Bin Laden says his negotiators should not leave their rented house in the Pakistani city of Peshawar “except on a cloudy overcast day”.

Another, fragmentary document acknowledges that al-Qaida executed four would-be volunteers on suspicion of spying, only to discover they were probably innocent, according to senior US intelligence officials authorised to discuss the materials in advance of their public release.

“I did not mention this to justify what has happened,” wrote the undated letter’s unidentified author, adding: “We are in an intelligence battle and humans are humans and no one is infallible.”

In a letter to Rahman dated 11 May 2010, Bin Laden urged caution in arranging an interview with an Al-Jazeera journalist, asserting that the US could be tracking his movements through devices implanted in his equipment, or by satellite.

“You must keep in mind the possibility, however, slight, that journalists can be under surveillance that neither we nor they can perceive, either on the ground or via satellite,” he wrote.

One document, a handwritten note that US intelligence officials believe the Saudi-born militant composed in the late 1990s, laid out how he wanted to distribute about $29m (£20.7m) he had in Sudan.

Bin Laden lived in Sudan for five years as an official guest until he was asked to leave in May 1996 by the then-Islamist government under pressure from the US. He moved to Afghanistan to launch his new strategy of global terrorism directed at the US.

The exact extent of Bin Laden’s personal fortune has long been debated by analysts and intelligence experts.

This document appears to indicate that, at least shortly before the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden, the son of a Saudi construction tycoon, had significant assets, even if he may not have been able to access them.

One per cent of the $29m, Bin Laden wrote, should go to Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, a senior al-Qaida militant who used the nom de guerre Abu Hafs al-Mauritani.

Another 1% of the sum should be given to a second associate, engineer Abu Ibrahim al-Iraqi Sa’ad, for helping set up Bin Laden’s first company in Sudan, Wadi al-Aqiq Co, the document said.

Bin Laden urged his close relatives to use the rest of the funds to support holy war. “I hope for my brothers, sisters and maternal aunts to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah,” he wrote.

He set down specific amounts in Saudi riyals and gold that should be apportioned between his mother, a son, a daughter, an uncle, and his uncle’s children and maternal aunts.

In a letter dated 15 August 2008, Bin Laden asks that his father take care of his wife and children in the event he died first.

“My precious father: I entrust you well for my wife and children, and that you will always ask about them and follow up on their whereabouts and help them in their marriages and needs,” he wrote.

In a final wistful paragraph, he asks his father for forgiveness “if I have done what you did not like”.