More Than A Decade Ago On This Day, Pakistan’s Sohaib Athar Unknowingly Live Tweeted Bin Laden Raid

Eleven years ago, on this day in 2011, Pakistan’s Sohaib Athar who tweets using the @ReallyVirtual handle, inadvertently live-tweeted the capture of 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden.

Hailed as one the biggest counter-terrorism events in modern times, Sohaib Athar, by live-tweeting became an overnight sensation and was subject of news stories and received thousands of emails following this event.

Athar’s version could be verified as five years later the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) put out a series of tweets on the same day (May 2) and said that they would tweet about ‘the raid as if it were happening’ on that day. The tweets showed that Athar was on point with every tweet and did live-tweet the capture of Osama.

A look at Athar’s profile gives an idea that the IT consultant, who lives in Abbottabad to avoid the hustle and bustle of the big city, is a casual Twitter user who even posts memes and jokes about himself not getting the blue tick or verified mark from Twitter. His account still remains unverified despite his exploits.

It was May 2 in 2011 when the US army and its special operation unit descended on a compound in Abbottabad and captured Osama Bin Laden. The locals were woken with the sound of helicopters whirring overhead. Athar, who too woke up with the sound of the chopper(s) put out a tweet saying that it was a rare event.

“Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 AM (is a rare event),” was Ather’s first tweet, followed by, “Go away helicopter – before I take out my giant swatter.”

Athar was probably unaware that within 11 minutes of his first tweet, the US special forces found and killed one of the founders of al-Qaeda Osama Bin Laden, who was responsible for killing innocents in the US and other places in the name of jihad.

He also was awoken with the huge bang sound and he predicted that ‘it was the beginning of something nasty’. “A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope it’s not the start of something nasty,” Athar tweeted.

He also muses if the helicopters were Taliban operated and says in another tweet that he has heard of a helicopter being shot down near Abbottabad’s Bilal Town area. A helicopter did crash in Abbottabad, which the CIA confirmed later.

Those were Bilal’s final tweets at that point of time. It was only in the morning that he realised that he live-tweeted the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden. “Uh oh, now I’m the guy who live blogged the Osama raid without knowing it,” Athar tweeted.

Athar quipped the next day that if he knew what he was doing, he would have ‘tweeted wittingly’

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