Image Credit: twitter.com/ImranKhanPTI, ndtv.com
According to Pakistan’s information minister Fawad Choudhry, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s remarks calling former Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden a martyr were due to a “slip of the tongue”. The minister said this in an interview with Pakistani TV channel Geo News. Choudhry added that the Pakistani government considered Osama Bin Laden a terrorist and also said that Al Qaeda was a terrorist group.
It may be recalled that the controversial statement was made by Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan last year when he talked about America’s operation on Pakistani soil which led to the killing of the dreaded Al Qaeda leader and the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden.
Criticising the US for its military action, Khan had said that the Americans martyred Osama Bin Laden. The video of Pakistan’s PM went viral on all social media platforms and he was widely criticised for his ‘insensitive ‘ remarks.
Earlier this week, Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi also defended Imran Khan and said that his statement was taken out of context. When asked for his opinion on Bin Laden being a martyr by an Afghan journalist, the minister avoided answering and said, “I will let that pass.”
Osama Bin Laden was killed during a US military operation in May 2011 in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad. While Pakistan was an ally in America’s ‘War on Terror’, the killing of the Al Qaeda chief in Pakistani territory soured the bilateral relations between the two countries. In a recent interview, Imran Khan called for a civilised relationship with the US, including better trade relations.