Osama bin Laden's Tora Bora hideout

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Intelligence reports have referred, for years, to Osama bin Laden's Tora Bora hideout.[1][2] Tora Bora is a high mountain pass in the south of Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. In the fall of 2001 a compound at Tora Bora was represented by US officials as Osama bin Laden's hideout, staffed by hundreds of fighters, with a vast network of fortified caverns, stocked with supplies and weapons.

In March 2015 photos of the site from 1996, and made public during the trial of Khaled al-Fawwaz.[1] The 1996 photos show a much more modest compound. Osama bin Laden lived in a small two bedroom house. There were merely two small tunnels, not a vast network of fortified caverns. Atwan estimated the tunnel that served as bin Laden's office was 13 x 20 feet.[2]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "Inside Osama bin Laden’s Afghan hide-out". Australian News. 2015-03-13. http://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/inside-osama-bin-ladens-afghan-hide-out/story-fnh81ifq-1227261280269. "Taken by journalist Abdel Barri Atwan in 1996, and obtained by CNN, the photos reveal the terror leader’s primitive compound in Afghanistan’s mountainous Tora Bora region." 
  2. 2.0 2.1 Phil Hirschkorn, Peter Bergen (2015-03-13). "Rare photos reveal Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout". CNN. http://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/11/world/osama-bin-laden-hideout-photos/index.html. "Atwan met bin Laden in his cave. It was small, 13 by 20 feet in Atwan's estimation, and as the new photos show, it was lined with shelves of books about the Koran and the Prophet Mohammed. Bin Laden liked to use the bookshelves as a backdrop for his videotaped edicts and interviews. The cave not only offered bin Laden a hiding place but also street credibility in the Muslim world, as the prophet is believed to have received the revelations of the Koran while camped in his own mountain cave."