Bin Laden Journal Seized in Pakistan Raid

WASHINGTON, KOMPAS.com - The treasure trove of intel obtained in the raid that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden included a handwritten journal containing his “operational ideas,” a US official said Wednesday.

Agents are studying the notebook for information on future Al-Qaeda plots, but the official described it as “just one of many things” found along with computers, hard drives, DVDs, flash drives and recording devices.

There were no “warm and fuzzy” personal or emotional passages, he told AFP. It was “more just jotting down some ideas. It doesn’t entail where he’s been or what he’s done.”

The Central Intelligence Agency, meanwhile, began showing US lawmakers photos of the slain bin Laden that President Barack Obama said were too gruesome to be released to the public. Senator James Inhoffe, a Republican from Oklahoma, said he was shown 15 photographs taken of bin Laden after he was killed in a US commando raid on May 2.

In an interview with CNN, Inhoffe agreed that the photos taken immediately in the compound in Pakistan immediately after bin Laden was killed were “pretty gruesome.” “One of the shots went through an ear and out through the eye socket. Or it went in through the eye socket and out — then exploded,” he said.

“That caused the brains to hang out of the eye socket, so that was pretty gruesome.” Inhoffe said he had no doubt the man was bin Laden. “Absolutely, no question about it. I’ve seen them. That was him. He’s gone. He’s history,” he said.

In deciding not to release the pictures to the public, the White House expressed fear that they would inflame sentiment in the Middle East and be used as a propaganda tool against the United States. Al-Qaeda-inspired insurgents in Yemen and Somalia have threatened to avenge the killing of bin Laden by US commandos and are chillingly warning the West of a bloodier jihad to come.

Pakistan Wednesday saw the first possible violent reaction to bin Laden’s May 2 death in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad, as drive-by attackers threw grenades at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Karachi.

The leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir al-Wahishi, warned Americans not to fool themselves that the “matter will be over” with the killing of bin Laden, the Saudi-born architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“Do not think of the battle superficially.... What is coming is greater and worse, and what is awaiting you is more intense and harmful,” Wahishi said, according to a translation by the US-based SITE monitoring group. The United States has warned of the threat posed by Islamist militancy in Yemen, the homeland of bin Laden’s father, and has warned of the potential for the country to become a new staging ground for Al-Qaeda.