Barack Obama lied about Osama Bin Laden raid, says Seymour Hersh

Veteran investigative journalist Simon Hersh has claimed that US President Barack Obama has lied about details of the killing of al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden.

The Pulitzer prize winning journalist has written in London Books Review that Osama Bin Laden was actually a prisoner of ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006. While the White House had claimed that they had tracked Laden by following the courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, Hersh has claimed a Pakistani intelligence officer gave him up to US for $25 million reward in return.

A CIA-led operation conducted a raid by US Navy Seal Team Six at Osama Bin Laden Abbottabad compound on May 2, 2011. Two helicopters carrying the force and landed in the Abbottabad compound which was located in a Pakistan military area without raising an alarm. 

But according to Hersh, Pakistan Army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and head of ISI, Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha had known about the US operation. In August 2010, the spy who is a consultant walked into the office of CIA chief in Islamabad.

Hersh also claimed that the naming of the then CIA chief in Pakistan Jonathon Bank in a criminal suit for a murder charge was part of an elaborate cover-up of its complicity by the ISI. He even says that ISI helped Bin Laden to hide between 2001-2006. 

He has also said that the unlike what was claimed by Obama, Osama was never buried in the sea, but rather tossed in the Hindu Kush mountains by the Seals.