US find porn stash at bin Laden compound

Pornography was among the items seized when US Navy SEALs raided the Pakistani hideout of Osama bin Laden, US officials said today.

The officials said it was unclear who the material belonged to, or whether bin Laden viewed it.

Bin Laden’s son and two other adult male couriers lived at the compound, the officials said, speaking anonymously to discuss matters of intelligence.

The pornography was confiscated in addition to a handwritten diary, five computers, 10 hard drives and 110 thumb drives seized at the site after the raid which killed the al Qaida chief on May 2. They are now being analysed by a CIA-led team.

The diary’s contents include bin Laden’s musings over how to kill US president Barack Obama, US officials say. Bin Laden concluded he was too well protected.

The disclosure that US investigators found pornography - which provoked ridicule among bloggers - fuels the US narrative that bin Laden was not the respectable or noble figure that his supporters embraced.

The US government previously asserted that bin Laden hid behind his wife in the compound as a “human shield” on the night of the raid, but later revised its account of the deadly shooting inside the compound and said she rushed at one of the Navy SEALs and was shot in the calf.

The SEALs fatally shot bin Laden in a post-midnight raid on May 2 at his hidden compound in the Pakistani army town of Abbottabad, shooting him in the head and chest when he ducked away from the raiders into his bedroom – they thought, reaching for a weapon.

After they killed him, they confiscated what US officials call a “treasure trove” of information from bin Laden’s second-floor office.

So far, none of the information has tipped off intelligence to new plots under way, or to suspects against whom they could take quick action, one of the officials said.

Meanwhile Pakistan's parliament condemned the US for the raid that killed bin Laden on their soil, but MPs also said they wanted an independent commission to probe the debacle instead of one led by the country's powerful armed forces.

The parliamentary resolution followed a rare private session with top military officials that began yesterday and ran into today.

During the session, Pakistani intelligence chief General Ahmed Shuja Pasha indicated he would resign if MPs demanded it, but no-one did.

The Pakistani military establishment was humiliated by the attack on bin Laden’s compound. Pakistani leaders say they had no idea bin Laden was living there.