U.S. Waited a Decade to See Justice for 9/11

After a decade of waiting, al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden, architect of 9/11, was shot dead when two dozen U.S. Navy Seals stormed his compound by helicopter in Pakistan

U.S. President Barack Obama announced late Sunday from the White House that the operatives, Seal Team 6, shot and killed bin Laden with two gunshots.

As details trickled out Monday, bin Laden was thought to have lived in the affluent suburb of Abbottabad, about 75 miles north of Islamabad, for about five years. The three-story house surrounded by 18-foot high walls and barbed wire, was about 1,000 yards from an elite Pakastani military academy.

The U.S. special forces dropped into the guarded compound by helicopters and left 40 minutes later the same way, taking custody of bin Laden's body.

Bin Laden was killed in gunfire with a shot to the chest and another  to the left eye. No Americans were harmed officials said. The body was later buried at sea from a U.S. ship. The Muslim extremist was wrapped in a sheet and put in a weighted body bag, officials said.

President Obama said the mission was based on a tip back in August about bin Laden's whereabouts, and Friday he gave the go-ahead for forces to take out the al Qaeda chief. Weather delayed the mission until Sunday.

A pair of couriers, brothers, were apparently traced to the compound based on a nickname revealed during an interrogation of jailed enemy combatants two years earlier.

Al-Qaeda, founded by bin Laden, claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. soil when nearly 3,000 Americans died after terrorists hijacked American commercial jets and flew them into New York's World Trade Center towers, the U.S. Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania.

The compound where bin Laden was found is valued at over $1 million, officials said. There were no phones, Internet or TV, officials said, which apparently alerted U.S. intelligence agencies that it may be a hideout.

Officials said bin Laden resisted in the attack, refusing to surrender. One of his adult sons was killed also, and a woman. Bin Laden's youngest wife—was wounded in the leg.

One of the U.S. helicopters crashed from mechanical error during the surgical mission, and then was torched rather than left behind intact.

Video of a bloodied room with a futon-like bed and oriental rug was said to be where in the compound the hunted terrorist was shot dead. U.S. experts determined through DNA tests the body was bin Laden's.  The genetic material was compared to that of a sister of bin Laden's that died in Boston years ago.

Top U.S. officials, including President Obama, watched parts of the mission in real-time from the situation room in the White House.

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