Eliminating al-Zawahiri minute by minute: this is how the CIA agents acted

After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, CIA agents closely monitored what was happening and noticed that Zawahiri had returned to the country. A small group of intelligence officers began preparing for Biden several options regarding the Al Qaeda commander. The president tasked them with ensuring that no civilians were harmed in an attack against him.

news agencies

02/08/2022

Tuesday, 02 August 2022, 18:26 Updated: Wednesday, 03 August 2022, 03:06

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Last year, when the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden pledged that his administration would not allow the Taliban regime to turn the country into a haven for terrorists.

That is to say, the war on terror as far as the United States is concerned is not over.

According to the BBC, a year later, Biden's security advisers told him that US intelligence had been able to identify the location of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan.

The planner of the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 (Photo: Reuters)

After the withdrawal, American spies closely monitored Afghanistan for signs that al-Qaeda leaders were secretly returning to the country, according to a Biden adviser.

According to reports, al-Zawahiri returned to Medina and settled in Kabul, in a large compound with high walls around it with his wife and daughter.

The neighborhood where the complex is located, Choorpur, is affluent and in the past was even home to foreign embassies and diplomats.

Now it is mainly inhabited by high-ranking officials of the Taliban.

The house where al-Zawahiri stayed (photo: official website, from Twitter)

In early April, CIA agents informed the president that they had identified the al-Qaeda leader's support network.

The spies began to establish behavioral patterns of the compound's residents, including one woman who was identified as al-Zawahiri's wife.

They also noticed that Zawahiri never leaves the house, and sometimes stands on the balcony.

In May and June, Biden focused on the war in Ukraine and domestic issues.

But secretly, a small and "select" group of intelligence officers began to prepare several options for him regarding the Al Qaeda leader.

The president tasked them with ensuring that no civilians - including al-Zawahiri's family and Taliban officers - were accidentally harmed in the attack.

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The US killed al-Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri in a drone strike in Afghanistan

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Biden's update meeting with his advisors ahead of the assassination (photo: official website, White House Twitter account)

The Ninja missile that hit al-Zawahiri's house (photo: official website, David Bathgate/Corbis/AFP/GettyImages)

On July 1, Biden convened several senior officers, including CIA Director William Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haynes.

He said that his advisers created a small model of the al-Zawahiri compound as part of the preparations.

"He was mainly focused on ensuring that the operation would be accompanied by minimal risk," a senior adviser told the BBC.

Biden asked for information about the house and how the attack would affect the structure.

In the weeks that followed, officials met in the White House Situation Room.

They meticulously planned the operation while a small team of lawyers assessed the legality of the attack - concluding that al-Zawahiri was a legitimate target based on his "continued leadership of al Qaeda and his involvement in supporting al Qaeda attacks."

On July 25, after convening the team one last time, Biden approved the operation.

At 4:38 in the morning, Israel time, two Hellfire AGM-114R9X missiles were fired by a UAV at al-Zawahiri's balcony and killed him. His family members were not injured. Thousands of kilometers away, in the White House, Biden received the message about the success of the operation.

The goals of the United States (Photo: Reuters)

In the video: the US president announces that the US has killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan (Photo: Reuters)

On Sunday, the Taliban's interior ministry told local network Tulo News that a missile hit an empty house.

But soon after, the Biden administration said that Taliban fighters from the Haqqani network, an Islamic terrorist organization operating against American forces, evacuated the family from the site and tried to eliminate any hint of al-Zawahiri's presence.

Senior officials in the United States announced that "several sources" confirmed the death, but emphasized that there was no American soldier in the area itself in Kabul.

They did not elaborate on how they confirmed that it was al-Zawahiri's death.

Therefore, it is not clear what happened to his body after the attack.

Officials in the Biden administration said that the United States did not try to recover the body, as they did in the case of the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

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