Osama Bin Laden Dead Photo is FAKE ??

Osama Bin Laden Dead at Abbottabad Mansion | Osama Bin Laden Killed | Al Qaeda Leader Dead at Abbottabad Mansion (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, was killed in a firefight during an operation he ordered Sunday inside Pakistan, ending a 10-year manhunt for the world’s most wanted terrorist.  

Here's the full text and above is the video of Obama's speech

PAKISTAN TRUTH REVELED FINALLY: The Times reports that the mansion was constructed in 2005. As Ogle Earth reports, there is construction noticeable in 2005 on Google Earth shots of a site that fits with descriptions of the area in 2005:

It was hardly the spartan cave in the mountains where many had envisioned Bin Laden to be hiding. Rather, it was a mansion on the outskirts of the town's center, set on an imposing hilltop and ringed by 12-foot-high concrete walls topped with barbed wire.

The property was valued at $1 million, but it had neither a telephone nor an Internet connection. Its residents were so concerned about security that they burned their trash rather putting it on the street for collection like their neighbors.

Osama Bin Laden Dead Photo is FAKE

An image apparently showing a dead Osama bin Laden broadcast on Pakistani television and picked up by British newspaper websites is a fake.

The bloodied image of a man with matted hair and a blank, half-opened eye has been circulating on the internet for the past two years. It was used on the front pages of the Mail, Times, Telegraph, Sun and Mirror websites, though swiftly removed after the fake was exposed on Twitter.

It appears the fake picture was initially published by the Middle East online newspaper themedialine.org on 29 April 2009, with a warning from the editor that it was "unable to ascertain whether the photo is genuine or not".

Since then, however, the image has been claimed as genuine on a number of conspiracy forums and used to substantiate claims that the terrorist responsible for the 9/11 bombings had been killed.

The Guardian was one of the few sites to hold back from using the manipulated image on its front page, reporting the picture's existence in its live blog but questioning its legitimacy.

The image is based on a genuine photograph of Bin Laden taken in 1998 and used by the Reuters news agency.

Update May 3: Google today updated its base image layer to include imagery from Abbottabad taken on May 9, 2010 — just under a year ago. You can still see the imagery from 2005 (and 2001) by using the historical imagery time slider tool in Google Earth.] And Indeed, in the specific region marked by Al Jazeera, there is construction underway in 2005. Below is the imagery in 2005, then in 2001, then in 2005 again with the construction marked.

Imagery taken on June 15, 2005

Imagery taken on March 23, 2001

Construction ongoing on June 15, 2005

Of course, it is possible that construction on the mansion began after June 15, 2005.

Finally, here is a Google Map I’ve made of the locations mentioned in this article:

View Osama Bin Laden’s mansion location.kmz in a larger map

And here it is as a downloadable KML file for Google Earth.

It’s possible that these locations are wrong. The easiest way to find the precise place would be to walk on over there and take a look, but failing that, I will keep this article updated with more accurate information as it becomes available.

UPDATE 9:53 UTC: Pakistan-based journalist Omar Waraich tweets that the location of the mansion, and where he is headed to, is Bilal colony/town in Abbottabad. On Google Maps there is a marker tagged “Bilal Mosque” which corresponds perfectly with the screenshots of Google Earth above. In other words, there is reason to be more confident that the above locations are correct.

UPDATE 13:29 UTC: Here are screen grabs from Al Jazeera of the compound: 

As you can see from the wide shot, the compound (not so much a “mansion” in terms of opulence”) faces the edge of an area with fields. Zooming in, we can see a section of red tarpaulin erected to hide ongoing investigatory activity. The mountainscape behind the compound can be reconstructed in Google Earth from the Bilal Town location pinpointed above. In other words, this is more evidence that Bin Laden’s compound is in the above location, most likely on the dirt road that runs along the creek visible in the Google Earth screenshots.

UPDATE 13:51 UTC: Here’s a screengrab of Al Jazeera’s map referred to above (via):

UPDATE 14:52 UTC: After a comment left by Dave (below), I took another look further to the west east of Bilal Mosque to see if there was any prominent construction there in 2005, in an area that is less built up than in Bilal Town proper. And indeed, there is one conspicuous compound that sticks out, and which closely matches the video imagery above. Here is the view in Google Earth in 2001:

And here it is in 2005:

I think we have a very likely candidate here. (I’ve updated the map and added the location to the Google Earth KML file.)

UPDATE 15:13 UTC: Published a few minutes ago, this new story by the BBC all but confirms that this compound is indeed the correct location, with a highly detailed map:

(Via maptd)

UPDATE 16:22 UTC: The CIA Pentagon releases aerial imagery confirming that this is indeed the location, as reported by the National Journal: (Click to enlarge. PDF of originals)