Another US Ex-Commando Claims to be Bin Laden Shooter

Local Editor

A former member of the US Navy SEALs, Robert O'Neill, has come forward claiming to have shot the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during the operation in Pakistan in 2011.

However, two years ago, another SEALs member said he was among those who shot Bin Laden. Meanwhile, multiple military officials and fellow SEALs have said that it was a third person, the point man on the darkened staircase that night, who fired the first shot that felled the al-Qaeda leader.

Now, three and a half years after the mission in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the events in that walled compound remain the object of fascination but also controversy.
It may never be possible to say exactly who fired the fatal shot or shots, with multiple armed men wearing night-vision goggles moving quickly through the al-Qaeda leader's hide-out. No autopsy was performed and no video has emerged of the shooting. The military never released a photograph of Bin Laden after he was killed and said that his body had been buried at sea.

O'Neill said that he was the assaulter whose two shots killed Bin Laden, according to an account in The Washington Post on Thursday.

The website SOFREP, which focuses on special operations, revealed O'Neill's name as the self-proclaimed shooter on Monday.

However, SOFREP's revelation was in protest at O'Neill's decision to reveal his role in the mission.
 
Meanwhile, however, O'Neill told the Post that he shot bin Laden in the forehead at his hideout in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad three years ago.

O'Neill is scheduled to appear in a Fox News documentary next week.

He told the Post that he decided to come forward ahead of planned media appearances next week when his identity was disclosed by SOFREP.

Furthermore, the Post said O'Neill had long agonized over whether to go public but finally decided to do so after concerns that others would leak his identity, which was already known in military circles, by members of Congress and at least two news organizations.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team