Slain Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden had backed Joe Biden for the post of the US President in 2010, saying that he would “lead the US into a crisis”, a seized letter has revealed.
According to reports, a 48-page letter written by Osama bin Laden, which was recovered along with a series of documents from the 9/11 mastermind, has reportedly shown that Osama bin Laden had banned Al-Qaeda from assassinating Joe Biden as he believed that he would turn out to be an “incompetent President”.
Osama bin Laden had written the letter to an aide identified as ‘Brother Shaykh Mahmud’ or Atiyah Abd al-Rahman.
In the letter dated May 2010, Osama bin Laden had told his followers that he has no plans to assassinate Joe Biden because he deemed him “totally unprepared” to lead the United States. The letter was found in a trove of documents at the Pakistan compound where US special forces killed him in 2011.
“Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis,” Osama bin Laden categorically stated in his letter.
Instead, bin Laden urged his followers to keep an eye on the then-President Obama. He told his aides there was a high priority to target the aircraft of Barack Obama, then US President, and CIA director at the time David Petraeus.
“They are not to target visits by US Vice President Biden. The groups will remain on the lookout for Obama or Petraeus,” bin Laden wrote.
“The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of the infidelity, and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency for the remainder of the term, as it is the norm over there,” the letter read.
In the letter, Osama bin Laden had also discussed the need to direct resources away from terror attacks in other Muslim countries and instead focus on direct attacks against the US.
On page 36, he had revealed his desire to form two hit squads – one in Pakistan and another in Afghanistan – who would plot attacks against then-US President Barack Obama and former-CIA director David Petraeus, should they visit either country.
“As for Petraeus, he is the man of the house in this last year of the war, and killing him would alter the war’s path,” the letter said.
The documents, penned between 2006 and 2011, are now publicly available through West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.
The document was first made public in 2012. However, the letter has attained new significance amidst the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan that has led to the onslaught of the Taliban. US President Joe Biden is facing mounting criticism worldwide for abandoning Afghans to their fate by the sudden withdrawal of the US forces.
On July 8, President Biden said it was ‘highly unlikely’ the Taliban would take control of Afghanistan and denied there would be chaos in Kabul. However, a month later, the Taliban has overrun most of the provinces in the war-torn country and has now taken complete control of Kabul – the seat of power in Afghanistan.
