BBC censors Benazir Bhutto's 2007 Frost TV interview assertion about "Omar Sheik, the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden”

On 2 November 2007 Benazir Bhutto was interviewed by Sir David Frost at Al Jazeera shortly before her murder on 27 December 2007. In this interview she said: "And he had also dealings with Omar Sheik, the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden." The same interview was published on the BBC website, but that key sentence was removed. Here is the transcript of this key passage: “Frost: In terms of the three people you mentioned - were they members of or associated with the government? Bhutto: Yes well one of them is a very key figure in security, a former military officer. He's someone who has had dealings with ?? Mohammed, one of the band groups and Mohammed Assar, who was in an Indian jail for decapitating three British tourists and three American tourists. And he had also dealings with Omar Sheik, the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden” (see “BBC censors interview with Benazir Bhutto: … “the man who murdered Osama bin Laden” (2 versions)”: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3468310105875718252 ; also “BBC censors Bhutto Frost interview (Bin Laden murdered)”, YouTube, 31 December 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGAOH_E3aQQ .

The BBC censorship of the Benazir Bhutto interview was reported by other people, notably by Len Hart of The Existentialist Cowboy (2007): “When a news organization as venerable as the BBC censors the reportage of a story as important as the assassination of Benazir Bhutto --a highly visible critic of Bush/British policy with regard to the "War on Terrorism" --it is fair to ask: who is the BBC protecting? Are they covering up a motive for her murder? Are they protecting the regimes that engineered her assassination?” (see Len Hart, “BBC censors Benazir Bhuttos’s reports that Osama bin Laden had been murdered”, The Existentialist Cowboy, 30 December 2007: http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com.au/2007/12/bbc-censored-benazir-bhuttos-reports.html ).

Pravda (Moscow) reported the Frost –Bhutto interview thus (2008): “Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a suicide attack at the end of 2007 stated in November that the Osama bin Laden, the head of the international terrorist network al-Qaida, had been killed. Bhutto claimed that she even knew the man who had killed the prime suspect of 9/11 terrorist attacks in the USA. According to Bhutto’s words, Bin Laden was killed by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh – one of those convicted of kidnapping and killing U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl. Bhutto released that statement on November 2, 2007 in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV channel. Bhutto spoke in English in the program titled Frost Over the World. However, no one paid any attention to her words. Speaking about the enemies, who did not wish to see her back in Pakistan, she said: “Omar Sheikh is the man who murdered Osama bin Laden” (see “Benazir Bhutto named Osama bin Laden’s killer before her death”, Pravda, 15 January 2008: http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/15-01-2008/103426-benazir_bhutto_osama-0/ ).

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is a British-born and British-educated spy with links to jihadists, Pakistani ISI, British MI6 and the US CIA. He is in prison in Pakistan over the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl. According to Wikipedia: “Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in his book “In the Line of Fire”, stated that Sheikh was originally recruited by British intelligence agency, MI6, while studying at the London School of Economics. He alleges Omar Sheikh was sent to the Balkans by MI6 to engage in jihadi operations. Musharraf later went on to state, "At some point, he probably became a rogue or double agent"” (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Omar_Saeed_Sheikh ).

The BBC and indeed Western media in general have censored out the statement by Benazir Bhutto about “Omar Sheik, the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden”. We are all told the "US official story" that Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 atrocity, was killed in Pakistan on 2 May 2012 by US forces operating under orders from Barack Obama and his body (conveniently) disposed of at sea (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden ).

Numerous science engineering, aviation, architecture, military and intelligence experts assert that the US Government was involved in the 9-11 atrocity, with some experts suggesting Apartheid Israeli involvement as well (for numerous such expert opinions see “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/).

The BBC response to claims of BBC censorship (2008): “The [BBC censorship] claims relate to an interview with the late Benazir Bhutto, originally conducted by Sir David Frost for the al-Jazeera channel, and later rebroadcast in part on this website (the BBC has an agreement with al-Jazeera which enables both broadcasters to share certain news material). During the interview, first broadcast at the start of November last year (more info here), Ms Bhutto made what was, on the face of it, an astonishing allegation - that Osama Bin Laden had been murdered by Omar Sheikh. The claim was brief, and went unchallenged by Sir David Frost. Under time pressure, the item producer responsible for publishing the video on the BBC website edited out the comment, with the intention of avoiding confusion. The claim appeared so unexpected that it seemed she had simply mis-spoken. However, editing out her comment was clearly a mistake, for which we apologise, and it should not have happened. There was no intention on our part to distort the meaning of the interview, and we will endeavour to replace the edited version currently available via our website, with the original interview as broadcast by Al-Jazeera, which, in the meantime, you can find on YouTube here “ (Steve Herrmann, “Editing interviews”, BBC 4 January 2008: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/01/post_8.html ).

POSTSCRIPT: Top US journalist Seymour Hersh says of the alleged killing of Osama bin Laden in 2012 by US Navy Seals: " it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true'

Seymour Hersh according to Wikipedia: “Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and is a "five-time Polk winner and recipient of the 2004 George Orwell Award. He first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His 2004 reports on the US military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention” (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh ).

Seymour Hersh on press complicity in the post-9-11 overthrow of democratically accountable American government (2011) : “And so, I did know people in that process, and I couldn't write much about it. How to describe the Bush-Cheney years would be... I was telling a group of faculty people earlier -- and the book I'm doing isn't published, I don't want to talk too much about it -- but just to give you an idea of how differently they thought... As many dark thoughts as you may have about what America did after 9/11, whatever the justification was... I would argue that, what I'm really writing about is, about how eight or nine neoconservative whackos, if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over. And it's not only that. It's not only that the neocons took it over, it's how easily they did it -- how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced. And all of us, I guess, in the sense of payback and rage and fear, tremendous amount of fear in America, and we all sort of signed on to what we call now the global GWOT, the global war on terror which, for this government, [inaudible] still exists.” [1].

Seymour Hersh on the US Navy Seals raid in 2011 that allegedly killed Osama bin Laden (2013): “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true.” [2, 3].

Seymour Hersh on US journalism (2013): “Do you think Obama’s been judged by any rational standards? Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention to Iraq? Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? We are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now, what the hell does he want to go into another one for. What’s going on [with journalists]?... Too much of it seems to me is looking for prizes. It’s journalism looking for the Pulitzer Prize. It’s a packaged journalism, so you pick a target like – I don’t mean to diminish because anyone who does it works hard – but are railway crossings safe and stuff like that, that’s a serious issue but there are other issues too. Like killing people, how does [Obama] get away with the drone programme, why aren’t we doing more? How does he justify it? What’s the intelligence? Why don’t we find out how good or bad this policy is? Why do newspapers constantly cite the two or three groups that monitor drone killings. Why don’t we do our own work?” [3]

[1]. Seymour Hersh, “Transcript: “The Obama/Bush foreign policies: why can’t America change?””, Foreign Policy, 22 January 2011: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/22/transcript_the_obamabush_foreign_policies_why_cant_america_change?page=0,0 .

[2]. Lisa O’Carroll, “Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the “pathetic” American media”, Guardian, 27 September 2013: http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media

[3]. Lisa O’Carroll, “Seymour Hersh on the death of Osama bin Laden: “It’s one big lie, not a word of it is true’””, Guardian, 27 September 2013 via The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/27/seymour-hersh-on-death-of-osama-bin-laden-its-one-big-lie-not-one-word-of-it-is-true/ .