U.S. diplomats have expressed concern that an Islamic cleric convicted of whipping up racial hatred among Muslim converts in Britain might do the same thing in his homeland of Jamaica, according to a leaked cable from the island's U.S. Embassy.
The dispatch, dated February 2010, warns that that Jamaica could be fertile ground for jihadists because of its underground drug economy, marginalized youth, insufficient security and gang networks in U.S. and British prisons, along with thousands of American tourists.
It says Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, who was deported back to Jamaica in January 2010, could be a potential catalyst, and it noted that several Jamaican-born men have been involved in terrorism over the last decade.
Another memo says an associate of el-Faisal was suspected of involvement in a previously unreported terror plot in Montego Bay, a tourist centre near where el-Faisal now lives. A second associate was allegedly suspected of threats against a cruise ship in nearby Ocho Rios. No details of the alleged schemes were provided in the cables and both U.S. and Jamaican officials declined to comment on them.
U.S. diplomats and law enforcement officials have expressed concern in the past that Middle Eastern terror groups might forge alliances with drug traffickers or take advantage of general lawlessness in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The January 2010 return of "extremist Jamaican-born cleric Sheikh el-Faisal raises serious concerns regarding the propensity for Islamist extremism in the Caribbean at the hands of Jamaican born nationals," said the secret cable, apparently from Isiah L. Parnell, the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Kingston.
"Given the right motivation, it is conceivable that Jamaica's disaffected youth could be swayed towards organized crime of a different nature through the teachings of radical Islam," said the dispatch dated February 25, 2010.
The cable is one of the quarter million confidential American diplomatic dispatches first obtained by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and separately obtained by The Associated Press.
There is no hard evidence that Jamaica has a burgeoning problem with extremism, though some of the embassy dispatches list suspected associates of el-Faisal, several labeled as radical Muslims and believed to be involved in drug and human trafficking. One is a 31-year-old Jamaican suspected of involvement in a Montego Bay bomb plot and another man suspected of threats against a cruise ship.
Other Jamaicans involved in terrorism include Germaine Lindsay, one of the four men behind the 2005 suicide bomb attacks on London's subways, and Lee Boyd Malvo, who was convicted in the deadly sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in 2002.
Jamaican police say they are monitoring el-Faisal but note that he has no criminal record in the country.
"To the extent that he was living abroad and was convicted of offences, we do have concerns. But he is a Jamaican and we had to take him back," said Deputy Police Chief Glenmore Hinds.
One of the leaked U.S. cables said Jamaica's Ministry of National Security has established a special unit to collect information on Islamic extremism, but it voiced concern about whether the unit would be able to "react rapidly to actionable intelligence and to effectively prosecute an anti-terrorism case in the courts."
El-Faisal, who is known as "al-Jamaikee," or "the Jamaican" in Islamist circles, has been living in a rural town outside the northern city of Montego Bay, not far from where he grew up. He has several children.
He declined through a spokesman repeated requests for an interview with the AP.
Mustafa Muhammad, president of the Islamic Council, said el-Faisal's angry rhetoric and conspiracy theories may attract some young and disenfranchised people, but he doubted it would have much traction among Jamaica's roughly 5,000 Muslims.
"Faisal has always been very eloquent and the moment he speaks he captures your attention," Muhammad said in the library of a whitewashed concrete mosque in Kingston. "That is why it's so sad, so very sad, about what he has come to believe."
Jamaica's Islamic Council has banned el-Faisal from preaching in the country's mosques because he of his past. He now preaches in informal prayer sessions and conferences.
"He told me that he didn't think he had ever done anything wrong," Muhammad said. "That's a concern to me."
Born Trevor Forrest in 1963, he was raised in the rolling hills of northern Jamaica. His parents belonged to the Salvation Army, the Christian evangelical group. He converted to Islam after being introduced to the faith by a school teacher at about 16, Muhammad said.
Shortly after his conversion, el-Faisal's global migrations began. In the early 1980s, he travelled to Trinidad for a Saudi-Arabian-sponsored course in Islamic and Arabic studies. He then went to Guyana for similar studies, according to terrorism researchers.
El-Faisal, now a compactly built 47-year-old man with receding hair, was deported to Jamaica for the second time last year after being arrested in Kenya, where he reportedly encouraged young men to join an extremist Islamic group in Somalia.
Before that, he preached in a London mosque attended by convicted terrorists and was imprisoned in Britain for nearly four and a half years for inciting murder and stirring racial hatred with sermons titled "No peace with the Jews" and "Them versus Us." In one recorded sermon, he told followers that "the way forward is the bullet." On another, he said jihadists should use "chemical weapons to exterminate the unbelievers."
"Faisal's popularity remains strong with online jihadist supporters, particularly American jihadist groups. His sermons are widely published across the Internet," said Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst who is now an independent terrorism researcher.
Some experts in militant Islam said his isolation in Jamaica may create a mystique that could draw alienated people into his circle.
"There is a danger that Abdullah Faisal will radicalize individuals in Jamaica, just as he has previously done in the U.K. and elsewhere. He is a powerful, charismatic speaker who is easily capable of presenting Islamist extremism as a rational choice," said James Brandon of the Quilliam Foundation, a British anti-extremism think-tank .

American officials have met with a senior aide to the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, at least three times in recent months in the first direct exploratory peace talks, officials in the region said.
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Tayeb Agha,  an aide to the Taliban leader, has met with Americans in exploratory peace talks.


Pakistan sent its most senior bureaucrat in the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, Salman Bashir, to the latest round of trilateral talks in Kabul on Tuesday.
The meetings have been facilitated by Germany and Qatar, but American officials have been present each time, meeting with Tayeb Agha, who is a close personal assistant to Mullah Omar, the officials said. The C.I.A. and the State Department have been involved in the meetings, one official said.

The meetings were first reported by The Washington Post last week and the German magazine Der Spiegel this week. A senior Afghan official and Western officials working in the region confirmed the reports on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to talk to the news media about the issue.

Begun well before the killing of Osama bin Laden on May 2, the meetings represent a clear shift in the attitude of the Obama administration toward peace talks with the Taliban, first signaled by a speech in February by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Western officials said. In that speech Mrs. Clinton said that previous requirements for starting talks could instead be considered “desired outcomes,” opening the way to exploratory meetings without preconditions.

The presence of Mr. Agha, a longtime personal assistant of the reclusive Taliban leader, is a sign that the Taliban are serious despite their public opposition to peace talks, the officials said. Through spokesmen and in e-mailed statements, the Taliban have always rejected peace talks until foreign forces leave Afghanistan. But privately, through intermediaries, they have insisted on direct meetings with United States officials, which would give them official recognition of their movement.

Mr. Agha speaks English and Arabic, and he has been easily identified, avoiding the false start that occurred last year when an impostor posed as a Taliban commander, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, in meetings with Afghans and NATO officials. Mr. Agha is reported to have attended a dinner hosted by the king of Saudi Arabia several years ago, which was seen as the first American-sanctioned overture toward the Taliban.

Yet the senior Afghan official cautioned that the meetings might not represent much because Mr. Agha was known to be no longer particularly close to Mullah Omar. Mr. Agha was a much trusted personal assistant, answering phone calls and making appointments for Mullah Omar, for most of the Taliban’s time in power, from 1994 to 2001. Now in his late 30s, Mr. Agha is thought to have lived in Quetta, Pakistan, since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, and to have remained in touch with the Taliban leader. Yet his authority to speak for the insurgents remains unclear.

Mullah Omar’s ability to control the increasingly radicalized insurgent commanders and groups allied with the Taliban also remains in question. He is still the spiritual leader of the Taliban movement, and he certainly retains strong command over Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, which represent the bulk of the insurgency. Yet the increasingly radical Pakistani Taliban groups that send insurgents to Afghanistan and the Haqqani family, which runs its own fief in Pakistan’s tribal areas, have disregarded Mullah Omar’s orders in the past despite swearing allegiance to him.

The meetings have been conducted without the participation of Pakistan, which has long called for negotiations with the Taliban as a way to end the war on its western border and which has insisted that it also be included. Pakistan’s chief of army staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, even offered President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan his help in bringing Taliban insurgent leaders, who are widely known to use Pakistan’s tribal area as a sanctuary, to the negotiating table.

Yet Pakistan is regarded with suspicion by Kabul, and increasingly by Washington and other NATO capitals, because of its longtime support for the Taliban, and those working on contacts with the Taliban have sought to draw them away from Pakistan’s controlling influence. One issue under discussion is the opening of a representative office for the Taliban in a third country, possibly Turkey or Qatar.

“You cannot do reconciliation without Pakistan, but also they can be a spoiler,” said one European diplomat in the region. The diplomat spoke on the condition of anonymity, in keeping with diplomatic protocol.

The Obama administration is instead conducting parallel but separate dialogues: one between the United States, Afghanistan and the Taliban; and a second between the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan appears to be satisfied with this track so far and sent its most senior bureaucrat in the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, Salman Bashir, to the latest round of trilateral talks in Kabul on Tuesday.

Mr. Bashir, whose brother, Adm. Noman Bashir, is commander of the Pakistani Navy, is known to work closely with the Pakistani military establishment, which has increasingly assumed control of foreign policy from the civilian government in recent months.

In Kabul, Mr. Bashir strongly endorsed the efforts of Mr. Karzai and the people of Afghanistan to promote peace. “There is increasing recognition that the way forward is to promote reconciliation, peace and stability,” he told journalists.

Pakistan has delayed carrying out a trade transit agreement, which was pushed through by the United States’ special envoy to the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, last year before his death, but the two countries have now agreed to put the treaty into operation by June 12, according to a statement by the American diplomat at the meeting, E. Anthony Wayne.

Germany, which has troops in northern Afghanistan, has led the process with the Taliban and hosted some meetings, while Qatar has hosted another, according to the officials.

A spokesman at the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin could not confirm that any meetings occurred, but officials interviewed said a number had taken place, moderated by Germany’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Michael Steiner. Mr. Steiner had worked with Mr. Holbrooke on the Dayton Accords to end the war in Bosnia and was asked by the American diplomat to lead the 50-member contact group for Afghanistan.

European countries with troops in Afghanistan have been keen for some years to start a process of negotiation with the Taliban as part of an exit strategy, but the process barely moved until the Obama administration shifted gears on reconciliation in the past few months, one Western official said.

Now Pakistani leaders can be seen crying, “Pakistan itself is the biggest victim of terrorism.” As a consequence of wrong decision making and policy failures, today Pakistan needs world support to combat terrorism. Killing of Osama bin Laden by the US commandoes near the Pakistani capital has left Pak leaders speechless. Pakistani people and the ruling elite are nowadays faced with varying kinds of doubts. People are shocked by the failure of Pakistani army, security and intelligence system at a time when the US forces entered Pakistan, killed Osama and fled away with his body. The people of Pakistan are treating it as a violation of their sovereignty.

Although public posturing of Pak rulers is same as that of the people, they are incapable of doing anything more than that. Washington is not only calling “Operation Geronimo” legitimate, it has also indicated that such an operation could be repeated in its national interest.

Moreover, on the very next day of killing Laden, the US carried out yet another drone attack in Pakistani airspace. Albeit to show to the people of Pakistan, this time Pak army fired back on an American helicopter for “violating” its airspace. In retaliatory fire that followed, many Pakistan soldiers got injured. Amidst the rising tensions in the aftermath of Laden’s killing, American senator John Kerry recently visited Pakistan. He clearly told Pakistan that America has no regrets for Operation Geronimo. Pakistani establishment should ponder over the reasons for why it is faced with such harsh realities today.

Amidst this chaos and anarchy in Pakistan, when Prime Minister Gilani seeks the world support to fight terrorism, the question becomes imperative- What kind of support Pakistan expects from the world? Does it need only arms and money to “fight terror”, which has proved to be counterproductive? When the US has to substantiate the presence of the most dreadful terrorist in its backyard through a unilateral action, Pakistan finds it “violation of sovereignty.” Therefore, it is in the best interest of Pakistan as well as the international community that Pakistan prepares a ‘Charter’ clearly depicting the kind of “support” it seeks from the world.

The Army is to reduce the numbers of soldiers fully trained to parachute - meaning many will no longer qualify for the additional payment.

It could mean a pay cut of up to 10% for the lowest-paid private and officers told the Daily Telegraph it would seriously affect morale.

The newspaper said as many as 4,000 could be affected, including those returning from tours of Afghanistan.

But the Ministry of Defence said no decision had been taken on the extent of the change and that no one would see their pay drop for at least a year after any change.

A source said it was right at a time of public spending restrictions that "people who will never be asked to jump out of the back of a plane" may lose the payment.

Those affected would include quartermasters and cooks, who traditionally had been fully trained as part of 16 Air Assault Brigade.

"In light of the SDSR (strategic defence and security review) it is likely that the majority of Parachute Regiment soldiers will remain fully trained to parachute but the parachute requirement for 16 Air Assault Brigade as a whole will be reduced," the source said.

"Soldiers who remain fully trained to parachute will continue to receive specialist pay. Personnel will be informed as soon as these plans have been finalised."

It is understood final decisions will not be taken for a least several weeks and the payments would continue for at least 12 months.

"This is going to really strike at morale," the Telegraph quoted a senior officer as saying.

"These blokes have just got back from putting their lives on the line for their country and now their government is forcing a 10% pay cut on them.

"It's so outrageous that people just laugh."

The Top Gun flight lieutenants — from RAF Coningsby in Lincs — were spotted by an Italian military police patrol in the main Piazza Plebisicito in the historic Italian town of Gioia del Colle.

One was spread-eagled on the floor while the other was barely able to stand.
The paralytic pair were taken back to the nearby airbase and sent home in disgrace for being unfit to take control of their £75million Typhoon Eurofighters against Mad Dog Colonel Gadaffi's forces.

A spokesman for the Italian 'redcaps' said: "They were both the worse for wear after having been on a tour of the bars of Gioia. One was staggering around the piazza while the other was collapsed on the ground.

"They had not caused any problems in the town but had certainly had a lot to drink as the officers involved could not get any sense from them at all. They alerted an RAF liaison officer and they came to pick them

Two RAF Typhoon pilots due to fly missions over Libya were sent back to the UK for "inappropriate behaviour", it has emerged.

The men, based at Gioia del Colle in Italy, returned to RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire at the end of March.

The disciplinary action followed a night's drinking, but the MoD was unable to confirm whether the pilots were declared unfit to fly.

A spokesperson said two personnel had been "returned from detachment".

The incident at the Gioia del Colle base, where the RAF's Typhoon and Tornado fighter jets are based, is understood to have led to a temporary alcohol ban for other RAF personnel serving in the Mediterranean.

In a statement, the MoD said: "Two RAF personnel have been returned from detachment in Gioia del Colle following inappropriate behaviour; this has not affected the RAF's ability to sustain its current commitments.

"Individuals who are found to have fallen below the high standards of conduct demanded by the RAF can face appropriate internal action."

Gioia del Colle in southern Italy is the forward operating base for the RAF during the Libya campaign.

Twelve of the UK's Tornado jets and 10 Typhoon fighters - used to carry out bombing missions and patrol the no-fly zone - are stationed there.

In the first major breach in the bipartisan approach to the bombing campaign, Murphy attacked the government for keeping the public and parliament "in the dark" about the possible deployment of the helicopters.

Other MPs warned of "mission creep" and said the development showed the Nato operation was now seeking to overthrow the Muammar Gaddafi regime rather than simply protect Libyan civilians.

Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat armed forces minister, was summoned to parliament to answer questions after the Guardian reported that Britain and France were to deploy the helicopters against Libya in an attempt to break the stalemate.

Liam Fox, the defence secretary, is on an official visit to Washington.

Harvey told MPs Britain had not decided whether to deploy the helicopters. But a Ministry of Defence source said: "The chances are it is going to happen."

Murphy rounded on the government after Gérard Longuet, the French defence minister, said France would deploy 12 helicopters. Le Figaro quoted Longuet as saying Britain would make a similar commitment and that the UK's thinking was "the sooner the better".

The shadow defence secretary said: "The British people will desperately be concerned that French ministers seem to know about the deployment of British military equipment [sooner] than the British parliament.

"Parliament hasn't written the government a blank cheque on Libya. Ministers should never keep the British public in the dark on major deployments.

"This is a serious moment. It would be a serious escalation if such a commitment were to be made. Parliament should not, and should never be, kept in the dark."

Harvey insisted no decision had been made. "For the avoidance of all doubt, no such decision has been taken by the UK," he said.

"It is an option we are considering. No decision has been taken, and there is absolutely no sense in which it is true to say that we have kept parliament in the dark about a decision we have taken."

The armed forces minister said deploying the helicopters would not mark an escalation in the conflict, adding: "I do not accept that, if we were to take a decision at some point to use attack helicopters, that that would be an escalation of what we are doing in Libya.

"The targets would remain the same. It would simply be a tactical shift in what assets we use to try and hit those targets."

But Harvey said deploying Apache helicopters would have major advantages. "The principal advantage it would give us over what we are doing at the moment would be the ability to strike moving targets with greater precision than we are able to, using the air assets we are currently deploying," he said.

Others MPs said the Nato mission was now designed to overthrow Gaddafi. David Winnick, the Labour MP for Walsall North, said: "Despite denials, UN security council resolution 1973 is in fact being used for regime change. Regime change is totally outside international law."

John Barron, the Conservative MP for Basildon and Billericay, said: "Whether or not we deploy Apache helicopters, the fact that a key Nato ally has [done so] represents a significant escalation in this conflict and reinforces the point that regime change has been the aim of our intervention."

Dennis Skinner, the Labour MP for Bolsover, said: "Hasn't this intervention been subject to mission creep ever since it began? The statements that have been made in this house have indicated that – a little bit of help here, special forces there, further intervention.

"Now the French, who initiated this intervention in the first place because of an election in France next year ... there is no surprise to me that they are now telling the British government what the next phase is."

Chris Bryant, Labour's former Europe minister, warned of a stalemate. He said: "The trouble is that, if the government's aim is not regime change, then it is basically stalemate. How long is that stalemate going to go on?"

Bernard Jenkin, the former Tory shadow defence secretary, issued a similar warning, saying: "We either have to break the stalemate or broker a peace."

Other MPs were supportive. Nicholas Soames, a former Tory defence minister, said: "The deployment, were it to happen, of the Apache would be entirely appropriate given, particularly, the change in tactics of the Gaddafi forces. [There is] the requirement to have a highly effective machine that is able to deal with the hard-to-find targets."

The former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell said: "Were Apache helicopters to be deployed – which, after all, carry missiles – what would the difference in principle be between that and the use of fast jets carrying missiles?"

The decision to arm officers has not come from a specific threat
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond announced the British Transport Police (BTP) will have its owned armed capability. Until now officers have not carried weapons.
He said armed patrols would be "deployed as appropriate in response to the terrorism threat level at any given time".
Armed police from other forces sometimes patrol stations and trains.
In a Commons statement, Mr Hammond said the training BTP officers in the use of arms would "equip them with a capability already available to other forces".
But he stressed it would not be a daily occurrence to see armed officers at stations as they would be deployed "according to operational need".
Mr Hammond confirmed the timing of the announcement was "not as a result of any specific threat: it is a sensible and pragmatic approach to ensuring that our police forces have the right resources to be able to respond as and when needed to protect the public".
BTP Chief Constable Andy Trotter said: "I welcome the decision for BTP to have armed officers at mainline stations during times of heightened threat of terrorist attack.
"BTP officers have an excellent working knowledge of the railway which will enable them to respond quickly to any incidents."

A US drone strike on Monday destroyed a vehicle in Pakistan's Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked stronghold of North Waziristan on the Afghan border, killing seven militants, officials said.
The attack took place on the outskirts of Mir Ali, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town of the district where US officials want Pakistan to launch an offensive against networks fighting in Afghanistan.
"A US drone fired two missiles which hit a vehicle. At least seven militants have been killed," one security official in Peshawar told AFP.
Another intelligence official in Miranshah said two drones fired four missiles, hitting a van and killing at least seven militants.
"I do not know whether there was a high-value target. We received reports that those killed in the van were all foreigners," he said.
Monday's attack was the eighth to be reported in Pakistan's tribal areas near the Afghan border since US commandos killed Saudi-born terror mastermind Osama bin Laden in a secret raid in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2.
The drone strikes are hugely unpopular among the general public, who are deeply opposed to the government's alliance with Washington, and inflame anti-US feeling, which has heightened further after the bin Laden raid.
Missile attacks doubled in the area last year, with more than 100 drone strikes killing over 670 people in 2010, compared with 45 strikes that killed 420 in 2009, according to an AFP tally.
Most have been concentrated in North Waziristan, the most notorious Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda bastion in Pakistan, where the United States wants the Pakistan military to launch a ground offensive as soon as possible.
Pakistan says its troops are too overstretched to mount such an assault and that any campaign will be of its own time and choosing.
The United States does not confirm drone attacks, but its military and the CIA in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy them in the region.
The Pakistani parliament has called for an end to US drone strikes and said there must be no repeat of the operation that killed bin Laden, despite the fact that President Barack Obama has reserved the right to act again.
The raid also rocked Pakistan's seemingly powerful security establishment, with its intelligence services and military widely accused of incompetence or complicity over the presence of bin Laden close to a military academy.

fighting ships of the Libyan navy have been sunk or severely damaged by RAF jets in a strike that Nato said has crippled the ability of Muammar Gaddafi's forces to lay mines.

The ships were hit during a raid on Thursday night on Tripoli and Al Khums. One warship remained afloat but listing at its mooring between two merchant tankers. Fire and smoke were visible from miles away.

Of the rest of the fleet, docked out of view in the main port in Tripoli, one vessel was sunk and three severely damaged. All four were raid boats with fast manoeuvrability. At least three appeared to have surface-to-air missile launchers.

Another Libyan naval vessel was hit in the port of Al Khums, east of the capital. The RAF said the fleet had been hit to prevent it laying mines or threatening Nato warships enforcing UN-backed restrictions off Libya.

None of the ships had been seen putting to sea in daylight during the past three weeks.

At least four non-attack vessels, including coastguard cutters, remained unharmed nearby.

Ships had only started to arrive in Tripoli in recent days, after three months of sanctions against oil and many household supplies, and port officials said supplies were likely to be halted again following the attacks. "Last night's attacks have changed our expectations of shipping movements," said a spokesman for Tripoli ports.

"This will be a big disruption to civilian shipping," it will intensify the sanctions and make our experiences worse. It will return us to square one and stop all movement of goods"

Debris from the damaged warships had hit buildings and scattered over hundreds of metres. Nato has in recent days taken its battle to the heart of the capital, striking what it claims to be command and control targets.

However, it is coming under increasing criticism that its actions extend beyond the UN mandate to protect civilians.

The Libyan government says the navy had not put to sea since Nato started attacking government forces and installations two months ago.

Taliban suicide bomber rammed his motorbike into an armoured vehicle taking American officials to the US consulate in northwest Pakistan on Friday, in a strike the militants said was in revenge for killing Osama bin Laden. Two Americans suffered minor injuries, but one Pakistani passer-by was kill ed and at least 10 others were wounded in the attack in Peshawar, officials said.
The strike was the first on Westerners since the May 2 raid by American commandos on bin Laden's hideout.

The Pakistani Taliban, an al Qaeda-allied group behind scores of attacks in recent years, claimed responsibility.

Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan, said in a phone call from an undisclosed location, "We had warned that we will avenge the martyrdom of Osama."

The Americans were travelling in two cars from their homes to the heavily protected consulate building when the bomber on a motorbike struck one of the vehicles.

Osama bin Laden's personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world's economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday.

The newly disclosed plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simpler attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars.

U.S. officials said the tanker idea, included in documents found in the compound where bin Laden was killed nearly three weeks ago, was little more than an al-Qaida fantasy. But the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a confidential warning to police and the energy industry Friday. The alert, obtained by The Associated Press, said that al-Qaida had sought information on the size and construction of oil tankers, had decided that spring and summer provided the best weather to approach the ships, had determined that blowing them up would be easiest from the inside and believed an explosion would create an "extreme economic crisis."


"We are not aware of indications of any specific or imminent terrorist attack plotting against the oil and natural gas sector overseas or in the United States," Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said in a statement Friday. "However, in 2010 there was continuing interest by members of al-Qaida in targeting oil tankers and commercial oil infrastructure at sea."

With about half the world's oil supply moving on the water, industry and security experts have warned for years that such an attack would be a jolt to global markets. That's particularly true if terrorists carried it out in one of the narrow waterways that serve as shipping chokepoints.

"You start blowing up oil tankers at sea and you're going to start closing down shipping lanes," said Don Borelli, senior vice president of the Sufan Group security firm and a former FBI counterterrorism agent in New York. "It's going to cause this huge ripple through the economy."

Still, even if al-Qaida were able to blow up one of the supertankers that move oil around the globe, it would barely dent the world's oil supply, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates, who has been trading oil contracts since the futures market opened on the Nymex in 1983. A tanker holds about 2 million barrels, or enough to supply world demand for about a half hour.

The terrorist threat to oil infrastructure is nothing new. Members of a British terror cell that hoped to hijack trans-Atlantic airplanes in 2006 had also made plans to attack oil and gas targets in Britain. And al-Qaida's franchise in Yemen has attacked pipelines.

Friday's alert was significant mostly because it linked the scheme directly to bin Laden, meaning the idea probably has circulated among al-Qaida's most senior leaders.

The government encouraged companies to continue random screening, to warn employees about possible threats and to establish procedures for reporting suspicious activity. But there was no immediate effect on oil markets, and both shippers and security officials said it was business as usual on the water.

The entire U.S. intelligence community is busy pursuing leads from files recovered from Osama bin Laden's Abbottobad, Pakistan, compound to determine whether bin Laden's plots had gone beyond the discussion and planning phase to concrete threats, government sources told ABC News.

Sources familiar with bin Laden's handwritten journal and computer files told ABC News that names of suspected al Qaeda operatives had been found in the files, and that an intense effort was under way to find the individuals attached to those names.

A special Media Exploitation Task Force "working 24/7" in shifts has been set up on the grounds of CIA headquarters to exploit the bin Laden files.

U.S. intelligence has been trying to determine if the names in the files are real or aliases, and has called on Great Britain and Canada to to help it nail the identifications.



"The names that they are finding are extremely important," former FBI Agent Brad Garret said in an interview with ABC News. "I believe that they're under a lot of pressure to resolve and identify these people as quickly as possible."

Travel records are being combed to see if any of these people have entered the U.S. already, and names are being added to terrorist watch lists in case any operatives try to come here.

Some officials have expressed shock that bin Laden kept so much sensitive material with him in what has been described as the most significant terrorism trove ever discovered.

Analysts pouring over the bin Laden files have found a number of references that signal he was pushing the terror network to ready an attack on U.S soil on or before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Some analysts worry that such a plot could already be in motion, even though they have found no evidence of it.

But al Qaeda plots are often months in the making. The 9/11 plot, which bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed dubbed "The Planes Operation," took more than two years to conceive and execute.

The bin laden files indicate that he and al Qaeda discussed not only attacks against commuter trains but plots against airplanes and airports, buildings, vehicle bombs and hits like the one in Mumbai in which terrorists used guns and small explosives to execute victims in cold blood, sources familiar with the documents told ABC News.

Now intelligence officials are studying the files to figure out if bin Laden's writings reflect simply his aspirations or plans to be put in motion.

The dead body of an official of the Saudi Consulate in Karachi, Hassan-Al-Kahatani was flown to Saudi Arabia on Monday night.  Saudi Arabia ambassador in Pakistan, Abdul Aziz Bin Ibrahim Alghadir, who was in Saudi Arabia on holidays flew into Karachi and took the dead body of the Consulate official to his country. 
Talking to APP, the Saudi envoy said that under the instructions of Saudi leadership he has been sent to Karachi to take the dead body of the diplomat and his family to Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi envoy while condemning the murder of the diplomat expressed deep grief and sorrow over the tragic incident.  
The diplomat’s car was ambushed by unidentified gunmen riding on motorcycles on Khayaban-e-Shahbaz road in Karachi on Monday.

Starting today, a parking ban will be enforced in more than 50 streets in the centre of the capital, which will also be closed to traffic before the Queen arrives on Tuesday.
More than 8,000 policemen and 2,000 soldiers will flood Dublin in what will be by far the biggest security operation Ireland has ever seen.
Republican terrorists have already pledged to do everything they can to “disrupt” the four-day state visit, describing the Queen a “war criminal” last month during a commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising.
Earlier this week a suspected Real IRA leader was one of three men arrested in Dublin as part of an operation to ensure that known troublemakers are kept off the streets during the visit.
Ireland’s Defence Forces are on such a high state of alert that an air defence “umbrella” of missiles and guns will be in place to protect the Baldonnel military air base where the royal flight will land, while armoured vehicles will be deployed in Dublin.

According to the U.S. officials, Navy SEALS who seized bin Laden's laptop, thumb drives and documents (both printed and handwritten), also came across a huge trove of pornographic videos stashed in a wooden box in his bedroom. Reuters, to whom the U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity, did not mention whether the sleaze collection was commercial or home made.




Osama bin Laden hated Barack Obama, wanted to assassinate him during 2012 presidential elections
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The officials said they were not sure whether the smut collection belonged to bin Laden and whether he even viewed them. They pointed out, however, that discovery of pornographic materials and their confiscation during raids on Islamic militants are not uncommon.

What makes discovery of pornographic videos in bin Laden's compound interesting is that the Al Qaeda founder-leader always positioned himself as the leader of a religious war against Western culture. Interestingly, however, pornography doesn't seem to be in the list of Western sins that he was up against.

Interestingly, it was earlier reported that Avena syrup - a botanical product often used as "natural Viagra" - was found in his hideout. bin Laden has five wives and has fathered twenty children.

Currently, U.S. officials are interrogating bin Laden's wives, who potentially could provide details about life at bin Laden's compound and describe who came and went.

One question perhaps they'll be asking is how porn made it to the secluded compound, which had no mail service, phones or Internet connectivity. Through one of his courier boys, perhaps?

But his words have sparked a row with military leaders who believe soldiers are still needed in the country.

In a bid to bring the ten-year mission to an end, the Prime Minister has told the Army that soldiers should be brought back from the war zone within weeks.

But his plan - in response to the news of Osama Bin Laden's death - has been fiercely opposed within Whitehall, it was reported today.

Defence chiefs have drawn up plans to remove 450 troops from Britain's total of 10,000 in a compromise deal with Downing Street, but none are thought to be combat soldiers.

Those in charge fear the counter-insurgency mission against the Taliban would be harmed by early troop withdrawals.

A Whitehall source told The Daily Telegraph: 'There is a very active conversation going on. On one side there is the military concern about force density and continuing the mission, and on the other side the PM's political imperative for some sort of announcement on draw-down.'

The combat mission is due to end completely in 2014, but the death of Osama Bin Laden had speeded up the need for withdrawal in the Prime Minister's eyes, it is claimed.

A total of 364 British troops have died in Afghanistan since 2001.

 All British troops will leave Afghanistan by 2014

Mr Cameron's intervention came as the head of the Royal Navy warned the service would struggle to build up a force of fighter jets to equip its planned new aircraft carrier.

Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord, told MPs he wished he could revisit the Government's decision to axe HMS Ark Royal and its Harrier jets, leaving the UK without a carrier for the rest of the decade.


Admiral Stanhope has warned the decision to scrap the Ark Royal may limit the Navy's capability

Giving evidence to the Commons Defence Committee, he said that if the Navy still had a carrier it would be deployed on the current international operations in Libya.

'If we had a carrier it would be there,' he said.

The committee also heard from the head of the Army, General Sir Peter Wall, and the head of the RAF, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton, who both said their services were 'running hot' as a result of conducting simultaneous operations in Libya and Afghanistan.

Admiral Stanhope said the decision in the Strategic Defence and Security Review to scrap Ark Royal before the new carrier joins the fleet in 2020 could limit Britain's ability to provide air support for UK forces around the world.

Although the Government is committed to building the two carriers ordered by the former Labour government - a cancellation was too expensive - only one will actually enter service, with the second due to be mothballed or sold.

However Admiral Stanhope told the committee that could still leave the UK without a carrier capability for around three out of every eight years due to the need for periodic refits.

'I am very clear that if you want a capability that is available to this nation continuously, you can't do that with one carrier,' he said.

Abu Bakar Bashir has escaped the death penalty in relation to the discovery of a terrorist cell and paramilitary training camp after Indonesian prosecutors dropped two key charges against the radical Muslim cleric.

But the 72-year-old, who many suspect of being behind the deadly 2002 Bali bombings, could still spend the rest of his life behind bars if found guilty of raising funds for the camp, discovered last year in a mountainous jungle area in the Indonesian province of Aceh.

In delivering their sentence request in the South Jakarta District Court on Monday, prosecutors conceded they had failed to prove the primary charge of trafficking in explosives and weapons for use in a terrorist act.


They also failed to prove a secondary charge of using violence or threats of violence to cause terror.

Both charges, which carry a maximum penalty of death, were, therefore, dropped.

However, they maintained there was enough evidence, collected from a number of Bashir's former allies, to prove he was involved in raising funds for the camp and the cell known as Takjim al-Qaeda Serambi Mekah (al-Qaeda of the Veranda of Mecca).

It's believed the group was planning to carry out attacks with suicide squads targeting Westerners, political leaders and police in Indonesia.

While the remaining charge also carries the death penalty, prosecutors instead opted for a life sentence, citing the defendant's age.

They said Bashir, as a religious leader, was supposed to provide an example for his followers.

"But the defendant has led his followers to commit actions that are against the law of Indonesia," prosecutors said, adding that he had shown no remorse for his actions.

Prosecutors said the evidence presented during the trial, including testimony from former key allies, showed Bashir was clearly at the centre of money-raising efforts.

One of the key witnesses in the trial, Luthfi Haidaroh, also known as Ubaid, had previously told the court that he acted as a middle man between Bashir and members of the cell, including the deceased terrorist known as Dulmatin.

Dulmatin, killed in a police raid last year, was involved in making the bombs for the 2002 Bali attacks which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

Bashir served almost 26 months in prison for conspiracy over the 2002 Bali bombings, but was later acquitted on appeal.

In February, Ubaid was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raising funds for firearms and supplies for the terrorist cell, while others who gave evidence against Bashir have also been convicted and sentenced.

It is their evidence which prosecutors believe should also ensure Bashir, who will turn 73 in August, spends the rest of his life in jail.

As he was being led from the court, Bashir said the charges brought against him were the act of "friends of the devil", referring to the prosecutors.

"Such insolence. These people should be called terrorists. May Allah immediately send them a disaster," he said.

"What's most important is that I defend Islam."

As the sentence request was read out, about 100 Bashir supporters outside the court shouted: "God is great, God is great".

They continued to rally as Bashir was being driven away in a police convoy, which included armoured vehicles.

The case is due to return to court on May 25, when the defence will respond to the prosecution's sentence request.

Earlier, before appearing in court, Bashir had hailed former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, killed last week in a raid by US special forces in Pakistan, as a great warrior.

"For Osama, by Allah's will he now lives in heaven and he receives great honour for he is a great warrior," Bashir said from his jail cell.

"He has made a great sacrifice," adding that he was the bin Laden of Indonesia.

"The government wants to make me a terrorist icon like Osama," he said.

Two al-Qaeda operatives were killed in the attack in the remote, mountainous Yemeni governorate of Shabwa early Thursday, a Yemeni security official said.

Drones operated by the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command were redeployed in Yemen last year as part of a secret U.S. effort to reinvigorate the hunt for al-Qaeda operatives in the country.

Previous strikes in Yemen over the past 18 months involved cruise missiles fired from naval craft off Yemen’s coast.

Thursday’s attack was “the first drone strike,” a U.S. official said. The aircraft have patrolled portions of Yemen for much of the past year, the official said, but had not launched any missiles because of a lack of sufficient targeting information.

U.S. officials said the strike was not related to intelligence gathered since Sunday’s raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

U.S. officials have previously said that the CIA and U.S. military have struggled to gather meaningful intelligence on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen-based offshoot is known. The group has taken advantage of Yemen’s rugged terrain, as well as ties to its prominent tribes, to go deep underground after a series of high-profile strikes by the United States in late 2009 and early 2010.

The redeployment of the drones coincided with a significant expansion of the CIA’s presence in the country, but U.S. officials have said it could take years to build up informant networks and acquire actionable intelligence on the whereabouts of Anwar al-Aulaqi and other al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula figures.

The information about the strike came from Col. Hamid Saleh, security director of the Mayfaa district in the Shabwa governorate. He said the men were killed when a missile struck their car.

A Yemeni government spokesman, although not confirming that the missile was fired by a U.S. drone, identified the dead men as brothers Musaed Mubarak Aldaghery and Abdullah Mubarak Aldaghery.

The two men were active in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, officials said. Even before the killing this week of Osama bin Laden, U.S. government officials had warned that the al-Qaeda branch in Yemen had emerged as a more active and dangerous foe than the core group of al-Qaeda led by its central command in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Security authorities were tracking them down for some time,” the Yemeni spokesman said of the Aldaghery brothers. “They are known operational al-Qaeda fighters.”

Yemen has been racked for months with anti-government demonstrations calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to relinquish power. U.S. officials have said the political upheaval was interfering with efforts by the United States and Yemen to cooperate on counterterrorism operations.

Christopher Boucek, a Yemen expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Saleh has become more concerned with his political survival than fighting al-Qaeda.

“From the start, the Saleh government has been repositioning counterterrorism assets to protect the regime,” he said. “And the longer this political drama goes on in Yemen, the worse things get on the ground . . . so the Americans will step in if they have to.”

Among those killed in the previous drone strike in 2002 was a U.S. citizen suspected of ties to al-Qaeda. The CIA halted its drone campaign in Yemen after that incident.

Recent attacks in central Marib have caused widespread power outages and fuel shortages in the capital, Sanaa, further fueling anti-government sentiment and unrest. In the past week, power stations in Marib have been attacked seven times.

“We demand that [the Yemeni government] give us the truth about these drone strikes. Otherwise, disastrous things will happen to either Americans or Yemenis,” Ibrahim al-Shabawi, the brother of a tribal leader slain in an earlier U.S. attack, said in a recent interview.


Boone is a special correspondent. Miller reported from Washington. Staff writer Craig Whitlock in Washington contributed to this report.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has told the White House that he intends to stand shoulder to shoulder with President Obama as the United States steps up its global hunt for leading jihadists.
It is understood that the Prime Minister has given his approval for the elite British troops to be used beyond Afghanistan in order to "decapitate" the al-Qaeda leadership.
Britain already has counter-terrorist teams located in the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan and in Yemen, where they are responsible for training indigenous troops in counter-insurgency, counter-IED and counter-intelligence techniques.
Defence sources have said that the hunt for leading jihadists, such as Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda's second-in-command, and Mullah Omar, the former Taliban leader, will continue in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
But it is understood that the US and British special forces could also be deployed to conduct strike operations in Yemen.

The Pentagon has released home videos of Osama Bin Laden, seized at the secret compound in Pakistan where he was shot dead by US special forces last week.

The tapes show him watching himself on television, and preparing a video message addressed to the US.

At a news briefing in Washington, the Pentagon also released a propaganda video recorded by Bin Laden.

In total, five videos were seized during last week's US commando raid.

In the first video, filmed in October or November 2010, Bin Laden is shown wearing a white skullcap and white robes as he speaks to the camera in the style of previous video addresses by the al-Qaeda leader.

There is no audio on the film, but Pentagon officials said it was a message to the United States.

Three other clips appear to be a rehearsal for the video message, says the BBC's Jonny Dymond in Washington.

It is the first such film to emerge since al-Qaeda released a video address from Bin Laden in 2007, says our correspondent.

In another of the videos, Bin Laden is shown watching a programme about himself on Arabic language television.

A report of an exposé by a BBC local news programme together with some background information into the illegal sale of Zam Zam Water in London.
Reporters from BBC Television’s London News programme have uncovered a bizarre scandal that is a serious threat to the health of Moslems in the capital, and possibly nationwide or worse, the sale of “holy water” contaminated with arsenic.
The Well of Zamzam is located within the Al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, the largest mosque in the world, which is itself located in Mecca, the holiest city in Islam. The Mosque attracts visitors from all over, especially during the Hajj, many of whom drink from the Well.
In the Saudi capital, Zam Zam Water (or Zamzam Water) is distributed free to pilgrims, who are permitted to take home small bottles, but the Saudis, ever conscious of their role as the guardians of the holiest sites in Islam, have banned its commercial export. That hasn’t stopped a trade growing up in it, or in what appears to be Zam Zam Water, but this is at best an attempt to take the faithful for a ride, and at worse could seriously endanger their health, because rather than having the miraculous qualities attributed to the real thing, the Zam Zam Water the BBC found being peddled under the counter in London is high in arsenic, and other substances that make it unsuitable for human consumption.
After an investigation lasting several weeks, the BBC found a warehouse selling fake Zam Zam Water in large containers; it is clear from the undercover video recording that the people selling it know they shouldn’t be.
One unscrupulous dealer told the reporter that when Customs seized some of his imports they told him it contained arsenic. When asked: “Do you know what arsenic is?” he replied “Yeah, it’s very dangerous”, but he said the claim was false. Which begs the question: how does he know?
The BBC sent some of their purchases for what they called a comprehensive analysis, and were told by the Association of Public Analysts the water contained “excessively high nitrate levels – problematic for small babies; potentially harmful bacteria...and...arsenic”.
Unsurprisingly, this is not a new problem; two years ago trading standards officers in Lancashire found alleged Zam Zam Water being sold within their jurisdiction, complete with arsenic at almost three times the legal limit, and two years before that, the Food Standards Agency issued a similar warning, this time relating to the same product being peddled in Central London. But the BBC may have opened a real can of worms , not by forwarding evidence of the illegal trade to the authorities, but by asking a pilgrim to bring back a bottle of the real thing from Mecca. According to reporter Guy Lynn, the sample was indistinguishable from the presumably fake product on sale in the East End of London. This is in complete contradiction to what might be called the official Islamic line, that the water today has the same special properties attributed to it by Islamic tradition. Whatever action British public health agencies take, this is a story that looks likely to run and run.

Pakistan arrested 40 people suspected of having links to Usama bin Laden in the town of Abbottabad where the al Qaeda leader was killed, FOX News Channel reported Friday, citing a report by the Open Source Center, a US government-sponsored monitoring site.

The arrests came after a search operation launched Thursday by Pakistani intelligence agencies and police in Abbottabad, the report said, adding that official sources called it the "second phase" of the operation that killed Bin Laden.

Bin Laden was shot dead by a team, US Navy SEALs in a compound in Abbottabad, a military town 40 miles from the capital Islamabad, President Barack Obama announced Sunday. Al Qaeda confirmed his death Friday.

The Philippines police have arrested a suspected member of the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, who had been working as security guard in the capital.

The police said Friday that Arabani Jakiran was arrested Thursday at the plush Manila condominium where he worked as a security guard.  Jakiran is suspected of taking part in the abduction of hospital staff in the southern island of Basilan in 2001.  Some of the captives were killed as police hunted down the kidnappers.

Abu Sayyaf, which claimed to be fighting for a Muslim homeland in the southern Philippines, became best known for a series of kidnappings for ransom.  Police and Southeast Asia terrorism experts say the group has links to both the al-Qaida network led by Osama bin Laden and the Jemaah Islamiyah Islamic militants based in Indonesia.

Police officials say the arrest was part of a new crackdown on members of Abu Sayyaf and members of Jemaah Islamiyah living in the country.

Also Friday, police in Manila blocked a planned march to the U.S. Embassy to protest the killing of Osama bin Laden earlier this week in Pakistan by U.S. Navy SEALs.  About 70 protesters, who gathered after Friday prayers at a mosque in the city, disbanded peacefully afterward.

The Philippines has a predominately Christian population but it has a large Muslim minority, mostly living in the country's southern islands.

Former Taliban fighter manned an Islamic bookstall while trying to drum up recruits for jihad in Afghanistan, a British prosecutor alleged Thursday.
Andrew Edis said Pakistani-born Munir Farooqi, 54, was one of several extremists who manned the bookstall in the northern English city of Manchester in the hope of enrolling holy warriors to their cause.
"This was an organized attempt taking place in Manchester to raise men for the jihad, to recruit fighters," Edis told a jury at Manchester Crown Court. He said that meant persuading people "that their religious duty requires them to fight, to kill, and to die."
Edis said the recruits would be expected to attend "training camps and battlefields abroad, principally in Afghanistan," and that, as a Taliban veteran, Farooqi would have had the "know how and contacts" to get willing fighters to the area.
But Edis said Farooqi's efforts foundered when two of his recruits turned out to be undercover policemen.
The men, identified only by the pseudonyms Ray and Simon, approached Farooqi in October 2008, pretending to be at a low ebb in their lives and interested in Islam. The officers secretly recorded him as he, his 27-year-old son Harris, and two others — British Muslim convert Matthew Newton, 29, and former youth offender Israr Malik, 22 — attempted to radicalize them, Edis said.
The men were eventually arrested in a counterterrorism operation on November 16, 2009.
All four deny the charges being leveled against them, but have yet to present their case.

Up to 15 people were killed and some 60 others wounded in suicide car bomb attack on a group of a police force Thursday morning in Iraq's central city of Hillah, a local police source said.

"The latest reports said that 15 were killed and 60 wounded by the suicide car bomb attack in the city of Hillah," the source from Hialla police told Xinhua on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The attack occurred in the center of Hillah, the capital city of Babylon province which locates some 90 km south of Baghdad, when the police were on a morning shift, the source said.

Many of the killed and wounded were policemen and several cars and nearby shops were damaged in the blast, he said, adding the police force has cordoned off the area for investigation.

The attack came as the Iraqi security forces increased security alert in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities as they expect deadly attacks to be carried out by Qaida militants in retaliation for the killing of al-Qaida head Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.

Violence and sporadic high-profile bomb attacks continue in the Iraqi cities despite the dramatic decrease of violence over the last three years.

US government officials say they have found evidence in Osama bin Laden’s hideout of a planned rail attack on the tenth anniversary of September the 11th. The Department of Homeland Security claims to have intelligence indicating that the Al Qaeda leader discussed targeting a train within America.

The agency has been reviewing information found inside the Pakistani compound since the night raid and killing of bin Laden earlier in the week. Officials say what they have discovered since storming the hideout indicates one tactic might have been to somehow tip a train off its tracks. However, no concrete plans for such an attack have been found.

Meanwhile, relations between the US and Pakistan are still under strain, with attitudes towards America hardening in the wake of operation by the Navy Seals. Pakistan’s army is threatening to reconsider its anti-terror cooperation with Washington if another similar assault takes place, which Islamabad says violated its sovereignty.

Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the U.S. assault on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan show three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons.

The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who entered the compound after the early morning raid on Monday, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths.

[View the photographs in the module to the left. Warning - they include graphic and disturbing content.]

The official, who wished to remain anonymous, sold the pictures to Reuters.

None of the men looked like bin Laden. President Barack Obama decided not to release photos of his body because it could have incited violence and be used as an al Qaeda propaganda tool.

"I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk," Obama told the CBS program "60 Minutes."

Based on the time-stamps on the pictures, the earliest one was dated May 2, 2:30 a.m., approximately an hour after the completion of the raid in which bin Laden was killed.

Other photos, taken hours later at between 5:21 a.m. and 6:43 a.m. show the outside of the trash-strewn compound and the wreckage of the helicopter the United States abandoned. The tail assembly is unusual, and could indicate some kind of previously unknown stealth capability.

Reuters is confident of the authenticity of the purchased images because details in the photos appear to show a wrecked helicopter from the assault, matching details from photos taken independently on Monday.

U.S. forces lost a helicopter in the raid due to a mechanical problem and later destroyed it.

The pictures are also taken in sequence and are all the same size in pixels, indicating they have not been tampered with. The time and date in the photos as recorded in the digital file's metadata match lighting conditions for the area as well as the time and date imprinted on the image itself.

The close-cropped pictures do not show any weapons on the dead men, but the photos are taken in medium close-up and often crop out the men's hands and arms.

One photo shows a computer cable and what looks like a child's plastic green and orange water pistol lying under the right shoulder of one of the dead men. A large pool of blood has formed under his head.

A second shows another man with a streak of blood running from his nose across his right cheek and a large band of blood across his chest.

A third man, in a T-shirt, is on his back in a large pool of blood which appears to be from a head wound.

U.S. acknowledgment on Tuesday that bin Laden was unarmed when shot dead had raised accusations Washington had violated international law. The exact circumstances of his death remained unclear and could yet fuel controversy, especially in the Muslim world.

Pakistan faced national embarrassment, a leading Islamabad newspaper said, in explaining how the world's most-wanted man was able to live for years in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, just north of the capital.

Pakistan blamed worldwide intelligence lapses for a failure to detect bin Laden, while Washington worked to establish whether its ally had sheltered the al Qaeda leader, which Islamabad vehemently denies.

Speaking after the bomb attack which killed 16, including 14 foreigners, at a popular cafe in the historic Djemma el Fna square, Tajeb Cherkaoui has admitted there 'is a possibility of more dangers to come'.

Many details of the attack are still unknown, but it was widely believed to have been targeted at foreign tourists as the square, which is packed at night with markets stalls, dancers and snake charmers, is considered a must-see for visitors to the city.


Devastated: The bomb attack in Marrakech will affect the city's burgeoning tourism trade

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has said there is 'a high threat of terrorism' in the country following the latest bombing and adds that 'attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers'.

Holidaymakers are advised to 'maintain a high level of vigilance'.

Holiday company Kuoni confirmed it will continue to operate as normal but said it is in close contact with ground agents to ensure the utmost safety for customers.

The bombing struck at the heart of Morocco's burgeoning tourism industry, which is the second biggest employer in the country after agriculture.
Visitor numbers have grown two-fold in less than a decade and arrivals went up by six per cent in 2009, when the rest of the world was suffering a decline due to the recession.

Around 9.3 million people visited Morocco in 2010 and the second instalment of the Sex and the City franchise was filmed in Marrakech, sending interest in city breaks soaring.

However, the fear of further attacks could reverse Morocco's good fortune.

Tourism Minister Yassir Znagui has visited the 25 people injured in the bombing in hospital and admitted it was 'difficult to talk about the consequences' on future visitors.

'For the moment, the priority is to be near the victims and their relatives,' he said.

Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is a top propagandist for Al-Qaeda, has outlined a plan to carry out a 26/11 Mumbai-style massacre in the United Kingdom in an email sent to British tabloid The Sun.
The email was sent after the tabloid's investigator, posing as a UK-based fanatic named "Q. Khan", contacted Awlaki in a sting operation.

"We ask Allah to give you the strength and steadfastness to serve His religion. If you are a group of brothers who trust each other then you may work together. Otherwise we advise you to work alone. In case you decide to work together then it is definitely better to go all at once," the tabloid quoted Awlaki, as saying in an email.

"The options that you have for operations could be pipe bombs, assassinations or using a firearm at a location crowded with enemies," it added.

The email was signed: "Your brothers at Al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula".

Meanwhile, MI6 agents are studying the dossier.

British counter-terrorism officials have been warning about the threat of a Mumbai-style attack on major cities for two years.

The attacks, which began on 26 November and lasted until 29 November, 2008, took the lives of 164 people and wounded at least 308 others.

Four police officers violently assaulted a terror suspect in front of his wife and continued to do so after he had been handcuffed and restrained, a court heard yesterday.

Constables Mark Jones, 43, Roderick James-Bowen, 40, Nigel Cowley, 33 and Detective Constable John Donohue, 36, sat in the dock as the jury was played a secret audio recording of their alleged ttack on terror suspect Babar Ahmad during the arrest at his home in Tooting, south London, in December 2003.

They are charged with assault, committed in the course of the arrest.

The court heard the recording, made by a "probe" secretly placed in the property by the intelligence services, in which Mr Ahmad can be heard screaming in pain.

"They administered a very violent assault: in effect, they gave him a beating or they beat him up," said Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting.

The officers, part of the Metropolitan Police's Territorial Support Group, were dressed in helmets and protective clothing and carrying batons and CS spray, when they smashed into Mr Ahmad's home before dawn on 2 December 2003. They had been briefed before the raid that Mr Ahmad had received terrorist training, including firearms training, had fought overseas in support of Jihad and was in the advanced stages of martial arts training. They were warned of the dangers he posed and reminded of the death of Detective Constable Stephen Oake, who was stabbed to death in Manchester earlier that year in a similar raid.

"The reality was quite different," Mr Laidlaw said. The jury heard that Mr Ahmad was launched into the window, smashing it, knocking him to the ground where he was punched and kicked repeatedly, as the officers shouted, "Get down! Get down you fucking bastard," and called him "a fucking cunt", ignoring his wife's pleas to leave him alone.

He was then taken into a prayer room on the ground floor of his home, where he was forced into a praying position, while the officers shouted "Where is your God now?" before removing his pyjama bottoms and grabbing his genitals. As he was led to the van the officers stamped down on his bare feet, the court was told. The officers deny the charges. Mr Laidlaw said that the officers will claim that over 70 injuries to Mr Ahmad's head, neck, wrists and feet were sustained in the initial knock into the window and then during his transfer to Charing Cross police station. Mr Ahmad was released without charge six days after his arrest but has been in custody since 2004, awaiting extradition to America for alleged terrorism offences – the longest any British citizen has been held without trial on terrorism charges.

Mr Laidlaw said: "The officer [in the van] sitting nearest to Mr Ahmad's head asked him where he was born and when he replied London, that officer punched him in the back of the head. The same officer then... held him in a headlock. After releasing him [the officer] said: 'You fucking cunt, you'll remember this day for the rest of your life'." Mr Ahmad will appear as a witness today.

Pictures taken shortly after the raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden show three men lying dead in pools of blood and the wreckage of a U.S. helicopter abandoned during the assault.
One of the dead men bears a family resemblance to bin Laden, but there was no confirmation of his identity. The al Qaeda leader's adult son was among those killed in Monday's attack by U.S. commandos, according to American officials.
The pictures were published Wednesday by Reuters. The news agency says they were taken by a Pakistani security official about an hour after U.S. forces left bin Laden's compound and that it is confident of the authenticity of the purchased images.
Clad in a T-shirt, the man who resembles bin Laden lies in a large pool of blood that appears to spread from the back of his head. Two other men, dressed in Pakistani clothing, appear to have died from extensive head and chest wounds.
Sources have named the courier who lived at the compound as al Qaeda veteran Sheikh Abu Ahmad -- a Kuwaiti citizen of Pakistani descent.
Other photos, taken at dawn on Monday show the wreckage of the helicopter the U.S Navy SEAL team had to leave behind after a crash-landing. Experts said the tail assembly is different from known helicopter types and could indicate some kind of previously unknown capability to avoid radar, they said.
In particular, the tail features a cowling that might have been designed to reduce rotor noise levels, they said.
Pakistan has already said that the helicopters used in the raid took advantage of blind spots in radar coverage to penetrate deep into its territory undetected.

Sky sources said it is understood the men being held were British Asians and were taking photographs of the plant.
Four houses were raided today in east London following the arrests at about 4.30pm on Monday.
The men were detained under section 41 of the Terrorism Act after a stop check on a vehicle.
The five, all in their 20s and from London, were held overnight at a police station in Carlisle.
The investigation is being led by counter-terrorism officers in Manchester.


Sky's home affairs correspondent Mark White said: "From what I understand there was nothing found on them that would give immediate cause for concern that there was any potential attack."
A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said the investigation was in its early stages and no further information would be released yet.
The location and timing of the incident, which came hours after news broke that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US special forces, is likely to cause concern.
Police said there was no evidence of a connection to the events in Pakistan, but the Government has urged the public to remain vigilant.
According to reports last year, a counter-terrorism review of Britain's nuclear power plants was carried out after fears arose over safety at Sellafield.
The Sellafield site - responsible for decommissioning and reprocessing nuclear waste, and fuel manufacturing - is heavily protected by private security and officers from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, some of whom are armed.
Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows a police officer to arrest any person who is "reasonably suspected" of being a terrorist.

Local police said a stop check on a vehicle by the Civil Nuclear Constabulary on Monday at 4.32pm local time led to the arrests of the men, who are in their 20s and all from London. The BBC reported they were of Bangladeshi origin.

Sky News sources suggested the officers became suspicious after seeing the men filming or photographing around the plant.

British anti-terrorism police were now investigating, Cumbria police said.

The men were taken into custody overnight in Carlisle and were being transferred to Manchester. Under the terms of section 41 of the UK's Terrorism Act they can be held on suspicion of terrorist offenses for 48 hours without charge.

The arrests came just hours after news of the death of al-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden, which led to warnings from the Prime Minister David Cameron for the British public to remain vigilant to the risk of reprisals.

However police said for the moment they were "not aware of any connection to recent events in Pakistan".

The Sellafield plant, which last year completed the construction of a bunker to store 100 tonnes of raw plutonium, has been the subject of a recent security review ordered by UK government ministers.

The facility holds enough plutonium to build thousands of nuclear bombs, which terror experts believe make it an even greater target for a potential extremist attack.

The review of all of Britain's nuclear facilities came after the discovery of security weaknesses at the giant Sellafield reprocessing site. Exact details were not disclosed but security sources denied there had been any breach at Sellafield by intruders.

An east London al-Qa'ida cell that was foiled in a 2006 plot to blow up transatlantic airliners in mid-flight, also had in its possession an alternative target list of nuclear power stations, oil and gas terminals and undersea pipelines.

Scientists compared forensic samples from the body in the Pakistan hideout with those taken from the brain of the terror mastermind’s late sister.

Photos of the corpse have also been passed to experts in facial recognition, who are comparing them to previous indisputable images of the Al Qaeda leader.

America has carried out such tests before on tissue samples from unrecognisable victims of drone bombing attacks on remote Afghan and Pakistani terror nests, who it was thought might have been Bin Laden.

The apparent speed of the Bin Laden tests raised yet more questions about the U.S. operation last night. Merely transporting samples to laboratories where DNA profiling can be carried out usually takes time, as does the process itself. 

However, new technology means that the process can be speeded up and it is entirely possible that the Americans kept a bin Laden family DNA profile at one of their bases in Afghanistan. Indeed, one report yesterday was that the DNA test had already been conducted on the fresh corpse.

Dr Frederick Bieber, a medical geneticist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, told the LA Times that it was possible for DNA analysis to be done quickly, particularly if profiles of relatives had already been analysed.

'Often it can be done overnight, and in high-profile forensic investigations, it often is,' said Bieber.

Pentagon officials said that photos of the body and a videotape of the sea burial may be released soon to answer doubts that bin Laden was actually killed.

Described by US officials as "extraordinarily unique" the compound housing the terrorist leader was more like a fortress than a residential dwelling.
Surrounded by 18ft walls topped by barbed wire, the only access was through two security gates.
Built around five years ago at an estimated cost of £600,000, its accommodation block is three storey's tall.
Such is the emphasis on privacy that even the third-floor terrace is shielded by a seven-foot wall.
Inside officials said the house was sectioned up – and may have even been designed to hide a secret home within a home.

"When we saw the compound, we were shocked by what we saw – an extraordinarily unique compound," the US officials said.
"The physical security measures of the compound are extraordinary."
But what really provoked their suspicions was that while neighbours left their bins out to be collected, residents of the compound burned their rubbish on site, the officials said.
Despite its size, the "owner" who aided bin Laden – who was linked to the property by US intelligence agents – and his brother had "no explainable source of wealth".
The property also had no telephone or internet services associated with it.
"Intelligence analysts concluded that this compound was custom-built to hide someone of significance," said the official.
"Our best assessment, based on a large body of reporting from multiple sources, was that bin Laden was living there with several family members, including his youngest wife.
"Everything we saw – the extremely elaborate operational security, the brothers' background and their behaviour, and the location and the design of the compound itself, was perfectly consistent with what our experts expected bin Laden's hideout to look like.
"Our analysts looked at this from every angle, considering carefully who other than bin Laden could be at the compound.
"We had high confidence that a high-value target was being harboured by the brothers on the compound, and we assessed that there was a strong probability that that person was Osama bin Laden."
Locals said large Landcruisers and other expensive cars were seen driving into the compound, which is in a regular middle-class neighbourhood.
Salman Riaz, a film actor, said that five months ago he and a crew tried to do some filming next to the house, but were told to stop by two men who came out.
"They told me that this is haram (forbidden in Islam)," he said.
Residents said they were astounded to learn bin Laden had been in their midst. One neighbour said an old man had been living in the compound.
"He never mixed much, he kept a low profile," said the neighbour, Zahoor Ahmed.
"It's hard to believe bin Laden was there. We never saw any extraordinary movements," said another neighbour, Address Ahmed.

DNA Test Match Proves Bin Laden Death

Osama bin Laden's death has been confirmed by DNA tests that show a "virtually 100%" match with the al Qaeda leader, US officials have revealed.
The world's most-wanted man was buried at sea in the early hours of the morning, after he was killed by a gunshot to the head at a villa in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.
Officials said his body had also been identified by a woman believed to be one of his wives.
US President Barack Obama said: "The world is safer, it is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden."
A US defence official said Bin Laden was given an Islamic funeral, which involved him being wrapped in a white sheet and washed before being sent overboard.
This does not eliminate al Qaeda but it does eliminate their iconic mastermind. It will help eliminate any questions about the the commitment of the US relating to the war on terrorism.
Sky News blogger Jon-Christopher Bua
They said the ceremony took place at sea because other countries - including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - refused to take custody of the body.
US chief counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan insisted Bin Laden would have been taken alive if there had been the opportunity.
That contradicted sources that had previously claimed the operation had been a "kill mission", with no attempt to capture the target.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who was repeatedly subjected to methods including “waterboarding” and stress positions, provided the CIA with the name of bin Laden’s personal courier, according to US officials.
A second source – also an al-Qaeda “leader” held at Guantanamo Bay – then confirmed the courier’s identity, sparking an intense manhunt that resulted in the dramatic final raid.
Secret documents seen by The Daily Telegraph disclose that this second source – the terrorist operations chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi – played a key role in finding “safe havens” for bin Laden and lived in the small, military town where he was finally found.
The killing of the world’s most wanted man as a direct result of information obtained from Guantanamo detainees such as KSM will reignite the debate over whether torture is a legitimate interrogation technique in the "war on terror". Both KSM and al-Libi were subjected to harsh techniques during their interrogations in CIA prisons.
Amnesty International has already warned that the killing of bin Laden must not be used as evidence that torture is “justifiable”.

Bin Laden went into hiding shortly after the 9/11 attacks and the White House has been criticised for a series of failures that meant he evaded capture for almost 10 years.
During his time as a fugitive, bin Laden’s communications with the outside world were handled by a network of trusted couriers, who carried letters to and from senior al-Qaeda commanders. Using a telephone or the internet would have been too risky as electronic communications were monitored by the US and its allies.
But the CIA revealed that American spies have also been watching many of bin Laden’s couriers for years.
“One courier in particular had our constant attention,” a senior US government official said. “We identified him as both a protege of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi.”
American spies learned his name four years ago; two years later they pinpointed the general region where he was hiding. Still, it was not until August when they tracked him to the compound in Abbotabad.
Secret US government files on the Guantanamo detainees disclose that al-Libi had several dealings with one key courier for bin Laden, who may be the same aide that led the US to the compound where the al-Qaeda leader was killed.
Al-Libi’s Guantanamo file, dated 10 September 2008, states: “In July 2003, detainee [al-Libi] received a letter from UBL’s designated courier, Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan, requesting detainee take on the responsibility of collecting donations, organizing travel, and distributing funds to families in Pakistan.
“UBL stated detainee would be the official messenger between UBL and others in Pakistan.”
In mid-2003, al-Libi “moved his family to Abbottabad, PK and worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar,” according to the file.
In 2001 and 2003, he arranged “save havens” for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is currently still at large.
It may not be a coincidence that the “safe haven” where bin Laden was finally caught was in the Pakistani garrison town where al-Libi lived in 2003.
Al-Libi’s file states that he had several further attempted contacts with the courier and set up a shop front to be used as a “drop point” for the meetings in April 2005, one month before he was captured. The courier's name does not appear in KSM's Guantanamo file.

A NATO missile strike that Libyan officials say killed one of Moammar Kadafi's sons and three of his grandchildren was launched after Western intelligence intercepted high-level communications from the site, NATO and U.S. military officers said.

Up to three missiles slammed into what appears to have been an upscale villa in Tripoli late Saturday after "clear indications from signals" that the Libyan regime was using it to communicate with military units to carry out attacks against rebel-held areas, said a senior NATO officer.

"Signals intelligence" is a term for various forms of personal and electronic communications, including cellphone conversations and email. It wasn't clear if intelligence operations had detected Kadafi's voice or had intercepted other communications by him or his aides.

The building "had been disguised as a residence but was really a C2 [command-and-control] bunker," the North Atlantic Treaty Organization officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing intelligence, said Sunday. "It just so happened certain folks were there."

The Libyan government said Kadafi and his wife, Safiya, were on a social visit at the house in the Bab Azizia area when the attack occurred but that they escaped harm. Reporters who were taken to the site said it was difficult to see how anyone could have survived the explosions, which left shattered concrete, twisted metal and children's books and toys in a deep crater above what appeared to be an underground cellar or bunker.

The strike was the second in a week, and at least the fourth since the air war began in mid-March, against a facility used by Kadafi. NATO officers, frustrated by their inability to stop Kadafi's military and mercenary forces from attacking civilians, said last week that they intended to expand their target list and step up attacks against the regime's command facilities.

In Tripoli, mobs attacked the U.S., British and Italian embassies, which have been closed since the international air campaign began, in apparent reaction to the latest airstrike. A BBC report from Tripoli said the British Embassy was "completely burnt out" by fire.

The United Nations compound in Tripoli also was looted and U.N. officials said they had withdrawn their 12 remaining international staff to neighboring Tunisia.

Intruders apparently set fire to a building in the U.S. Embassy compound, and had occupied the two other buildings, according to a U.S. official. Turkish diplomats have been overseeing security at the shuttered U.S. mission.

Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, said he could not confirm the attacks. "If true, we condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms," he said.

In London, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, announced that Libya's ambassador, Omar Jelban, had been ordered to leave the country within 24 hours. By failing to protect diplomatic missions, Hague said, the Kadafi regime had "once again breached its international responsibilities and obligations."

The Italian Foreign Ministry condemned the "acts of vandalism" on its embassy, calling them "grave and vile." Italy last week became the seventh NATO nation to take part in the bombing missions in Libya.

In the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, the report of the deaths of Kadafi's son and grandchildren was denounced as a likely hoax meant to garner international sympathy for Kadafi and undermine support for the NATO bombing campaign.

Libyan state television showed a body identified as that of Kadafi's 29-year-old son, Seif Arab Kadafi, lying in state in Tripoli as dignitaries paid their respects. It was covered in a green Libyan flag, a banner designed by the Kadafi regime, and no face was visible.

A Libyan government spokesman called the airstrike "a direct operation to assassinate the leader of this country."

NATO officials declined to say which country's warplanes had fired the missiles.

The Obama administration and NATO defended the airstrike amid criticism from Russia and Venezuela, among others, that the alliance had overstepped the U.N. mandate to protect civilians.

NATO officials said the attack targeted "a known command-and-control building" and was not aimed at killing Kadafi, and that they were surprised when Libyan officials revealed that Kadafi had been inside.

A NATO official noted, however, that "command-and-control centers don't operate themselves," suggesting some leeway in the defining and selection of targets.

OSAMA bin Laden was holed up in a two-storey house 100 metres from a Pakistani military academy when four helicopters carrying US anti-terror forces swooped in the early morning hours of Monday and killed him.

Flames rose today from the building that was the apparent target of the raid as it was confirmed that the world's most wanted fugitive died not in a cave, but in a town best known as a garrison for the Pakistani military.

A US official said one of bin Laden's sons was also killed in the raid, along with three others, but the official did not name the son or the others killed.

CNN reported that the al-Qaeda leader was shot the head, citing a US congressional source, while Agence France-Presse reported that Pakistani TV channels had broadcast an image said to be of "bin Laden's face".

Pakistani officials and a witness said bin Laden's guards opened fire from the roof of the building, and one of the choppers crashed.



The sound of at least two explosions rocked the small northwestern town of Abbottabad where the al-Qaeda chief made his last stand.

The US said no Americans were harmed in the raid.

Abbottabad is home to at least one regiment of the Pakistani army, is dotted with military buildings and home to thousands of army personnel.

Surrounded by hills and with mountains in the distance, it is less than half a day's drive from the border region with Afghanistan, where most intelligence assessments believed bin Laden was holed up.

The news he was killed in an army town in Pakistan will raise more pointed questions of how he managed to evade capture and whether Pakistan's military and intelligence leadership knew of his whereabouts and sheltered him.

Critics have long accused elements of Pakistan's security establishment of protecting bin Laden, though Islamabad has always denied this.

Abbotabad resident Mohammad Haroon Rasheed said the raid happened about 1.15am local time on Monday.

"I heard a thundering sound, followed by heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering, then a big blast," he said.

"In the morning when we went out to see what happened, some helicopter wreckage was lying in an open field."

He said the house was 100 metres away from the gate of the academy.

A Pakistani official in the town said fighters on the roof opened fire on the choppers as they came close to the building with rocket propelled grenades.

Another official said four helicopters took off from the Ghazi air base in northwest Pakistan.

Women and children were taken into custody during the raid, he said.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has hailed the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as "a great success".

Bin Laden, blamed by the US for the 9/11 attacks, was killed by US forces in Pakistan.

"The news that Osama Bin Laden is dead will bring great relief to people across the world," Mr Cameron said in a statement hours after the news was confirmed by US President Barack Obama.

He said it was "a time to remember all those murdered" by Bin Laden.

Bin Laden was top of the US "most wanted" list, and President Obama said his death was "the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat al-Qaeda".

Mr Cameron congratulated Mr Obama and others responsible for carrying out the operation.

"Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the worst terrorist atrocities the world has seen - for 9/11 and for so many attacks, which have cost thousands of lives, many of them British," Mr Cameron said.

"It is a great success that he has been found and will no longer be able to pursue his campaign of global terror."

In the attacks in New York and Washington on 9 September, 2001, 67 Britons were among the 3,000 people killed when four planes were hijacked and flown into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

Following his death, the US put its embassies around the world on alert, warning Americans of the possibility of al-Qaeda reprisal attacks for Bin Laden's killing.

Mr Cameron also thanked "all those who work round the clock to keep us safe from terrorism. Their work will continue."

Responding to news of bin Laden's death, a senior Labour Party source said: "Few will mourn the death of a man who caused misery for millions.

"Today is a day for remembering both his victims and for redoubling our efforts to end the scourge of terrorism across the world."

Bin Laden evaded the forces of the US and its allies for almost a decade, despite a $25m (£15m) bounty on his head.