ISLAMABAD: Pakistan federal information minister Fawad Chaudhry has said that Prime Minister Imran Khan had a “slip of the tongue ” when he called slain al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden a martyr.
While speaking to Geo News, Chaudhry said that Pakistan considers Osama Bin Laden a terrorist and al-Qaeda as a terrorist outfit.
In June last year, during an address to the National Assembly, the Prime Minister had recalled how the Americans had conducted an operation in Abbottabad and “killed Osama Bin Laden — martyred him”.
A viral video clip showed how Imran Khan lashed out at the United States for how Laden had been killed in Abbottabad.
Khan said, “shaheed kar diya”.
Foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, most recently, in an interview with TOLO News, claimed that Khan’s remarks were taken “out of context”.
“He [PM Imran Khan] was quoted out of context.
And, uh, you know, a particular section of the media played it up,” he added.
“I will let that pass,” said Qureshi, after a brief pause, when he was asked whether he disagreed that bin Laden was a martyr.
Imran Khan was at the receiving end of global rebuke for his comments calling bin Laden a ‘martyr’.
Osama bin Laden was the head of the global terror group Al Qaeda and the brain behind the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States in 2001.
Osama bin Laden was killed in a military operation by US Navy Seals in 2011 at the garrison town Abbottabad.
He was accused of engineering a number of terror attacks worldwide, particularly targeting the American installations including the 9/11 incident of 2001 when close to 3,000 people lost their lives when five planes were hijacked to target American cities.