CIA releases vast Bin Laden archive seized in compound

WASHINGTON - Agence France-Presse

The CIA on Nov. 1 released a vast archive of intimate Al-Qaeda documents, including Osama Bin-Laden’s handwritten diary, seized in the deadly 2011 raid on his Pakistani compound.

The huge trove includes images of diary pages left by the Saudi-born global extremist leader and a wedding video that includes the first public images of his son Hamza as an adult.

Controversially, scholars from a Washington think-tank who were given access to the now de-classified trove say the documents also shed new light on Al-Qaeda’s murky relationship with Iran.

“Today’s release ... provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization,” said CIA director Mike Pompeo.

The CIA put online 470,000 additional files seized in May 2011 when US Navy SEALs burst into the Abbottabad compound and shot dead the leader of Al-Qaeda’s global extremist network.

According to Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio, scholars from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who were allowed to see the trove before it was made public, it provides new insights.

“These documents will go a long way to help fill in some of the blanks we still have about al Qaeda’s leadership,” Roggio said.