A Pakistani government report leaked to Al-Jazeera on Monday blasted the country's government and military for "gross incompetence" that allowed Osama bin Laden to live in Pakistan for nine years before he was killed by U.S. forces in 2011.

The report, called the Abbottabad Commission, is 336 pages long and reveals that Pakistan's intelligence organizations ceased actively pursuing evidence to find Bin Laden in 2005, and that Bin Laden used a small but dedicated support network to remain undetected. 

The report goes on to explain Bin Laden's actions while in the country. He first entered Pakistan in mid-2002, a few months after he barely escaped being captured by American forces at the Battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. For the next three years, he moved around the country and met with Al-Qaeda officials, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad. 

Finally, in 2005, he moved with his two wives and several children and grandchildren to Abbottabad, where it is believed he remained until he was killed two years ago by Navy SEALs. The report says that Bin Laden kept himself secluded in his house and that his children rarely went outside. He also wore a cowboy hat in the house, believing it would hide his identity "from above," according to an interview with one of his wives.

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The Abbottabad Commission criticized Pakistani intelligence for not keeping the search for Bin Laden a high priority and for not cooperating with the CIA despite being aware of their efforts to find him: 

"OBL was able to stay within the limits of Abbotabad Cantonment due to a collective failure of the military authorities, the intelligence authorities, the police and the civilian administration. The failure included negligence and incompetence and at some undetermined level a grave complicity may or may not have [been] involved."

The report also reveals that Pakistani officials were kept completely in the dark about the U.S. operation that killed Bin Laden until hours after his death was confirmed. Pakistan's "peace time" airspace security protocols had been in effect when the U.S. sent in helicopters to perform the mission. The fallout from the operation has soured relations between the U.S. and Pakistan, and one official interviewed for the report called it "a stab in the back" by the U.S.

 

Read the full story and the entire report at Al-Jazeera.

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