Abbottabad

Zero Dark Thirty is impressively spellbinding, even though everyone knows the ending. But the on-screen drama hasn't stymied the offscreen controversy surrounding the movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden. It's funny that the initial criticism came, sight unseen, from the right. Critics of President Obama feared the movie would be a valentine to him in the midst of the campaign. Instead, its release was delayed until next weekend (with a limited release before the new year)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA hunt for Osama bin Laden was sentenced Wednesday to 33 years in prison for treason in an administrative action under colonial-era laws that avoided a public trial. The move brought condemnation in Washington, where officials had been hoping to win freedom for Shakil Afridi, whom Pakistani intelligence agents detained three weeks after the May 2, 2011, U.S. special forces raid in the northern town of Abbottabad that ended in bin Laden's death.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The family of Osama bin Laden's youngest wife has asked the chief justice of Pakistan to order authorities to release her children and her and let them return to Yemen, nine months after the U.S. special forces raid that killed the al-Qaeda founder. Zakaria Ahmad al-Sadah, brother of Amal al-Sadah, bin Laden's Yemeni wife, said in an interview that he had appealed directly to the activist chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, as a "last resort" after spending three fruitless months in Pakistan seeking her release.

ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan - The two men who built the compound in which Osama bin Laden had been living had explained its unusually thick walls by saying they had been involved in a violent feud in their home village and needed to prevent their women from being seen, in accordance with strict Islamic custom, local residents said. Residents said the two were brothers who identified themselves usually as Arshad and Tariq Khan, though they also went by the names of Rashid, Ahmed, and Nadeem.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani doctor accused of running a vaccination program for the CIA to help find Osama bin Laden should be put on trial for high treason, a government commission said Thursday, a move likely to anger U.S. officials pushing for his release. Shakil Afridi has been in the custody of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency since soon after the May 2 American raid that killed bin Laden. The agency was humiliated and outraged by the covert American operation and is aggressively investigating the circumstances surrounding it. Afridi's fate is a complicating issue in relations between the CIA and the ISI that were strained to the breaking point by the bin Laden raid.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - U.S. and Pakistani officials acknowledged Wednesday that Pakistan has arrested several of its own citizens who helped the CIA spy on the house where Osama bin Laden was hiding out. Among those arrested may be the occupant of a large house about 100 yards behind the bin Laden compound, in Abbottabad. The house's watchtowers would have provided a clear view of the walled compound where bin Laden is suspected of having lived for perhaps as long as five years.

Ex-IMF chief questioned, freed PARIS - French police released former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Wednesday after nearly 30 hours in custody for questioning about a suspected hotel prostitution ring. Strauss-Kahn, 62, is expected to be summoned again next month by judges who will decide if there is enough evidence to press charges in the case, judicial officials said. The questioning renewed attention on the dalliances of Strauss-Kahn, a one-time French presidential hopeful whose political career all but ended last spring over a New York hotel maid's allegations that he sexually assaulted her. French police are investigating a suspected prostitution ring that has implicated police and other officials.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Authorities have ordered all six foreign workers with the Save the Children aid group to leave the country, after alleging ties between the group and a Pakistani doctor enlisted by the CIA to help track down Osama bin Laden. A spokesman for Save the Children's offices in Pakistan, Ghulam Qadri, said Thursday that the order was issued by the Interior Ministry. Authorities had previously accused the group of helping to make a connection between Shakeel Afridi and U.S. officials, who were searching for someone to assist in confirming bin Laden's whereabouts in the military city of Abbottabad, a two-hour drive north of Islamabad.

Who would have ever thought that revenge would be a dish best served on the National Geographic Channel? While Nat Geo may not seem like the logical home for Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden , this gripping film would be worth watching if it were on HGTV. Actually, the makers of Seal Team Six have taken more heat for their timing than for their carrier. Romneyites have been complaining that debuting this film just before Election Day gives the president a substantial PR boost, highlighting as it does one of the signal accomplishments of his administration.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Obama administration is pressing Pakistan to release a doctor who was arrested for working for the CIA to help confirm that Osama bin Laden lived in Abbottabad, officials said, but the doctor's fate has become ensnared in the bitter tensions between Islamabad and Washington. U.S.-Pakistan relations, strained after the May 2 raid to kill bin Laden, were pushed further toward the breaking point Tuesday when Pakistan's defense minister threatened to pull the country's soldiers off the border with Afghanistan.

The debate over the use of deadly force against an American who is on foreign soil and has ties to al-Qaeda sounds like a hypothetical straight out of my first-year Constitution law class at Penn. I can picture the back and forth on whether such killings violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable seizure or the Fifth Amendment's due-process clause. But this is no academic exercise, as the recent release of a 16-page Justice Department "white paper" makes clear: "Targeting a member of an enemy force who poses an imminent threat of violent attack to the United States is not unlawful.

FORGET ORLANDO! Pakistani officials say the government plans to build a recreation complex in the town where al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011. Syed Aqil Shah , sports and tourism minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Monday the project in Abbottabad will have a zoo, paragliding club and water-sports facilities, and is part of a revival of recreational and cultural activities in the province - and is not intended to counter Abbottabad's negative reputation following bin Laden's discovery there.

Zero Dark Thirty is impressively spellbinding, even though everyone knows the ending. But the on-screen drama hasn't stymied the offscreen controversy surrounding the movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden. It's funny that the initial criticism came, sight unseen, from the right. Critics of President Obama feared the movie would be a valentine to him in the midst of the campaign. Instead, its release was delayed until next weekend (with a limited release before the new year)

Mark Bowden is the author of "The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden," from which the following is excerpted The raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, was the brief, climactic end of a story that had begun almost 10 years before, with the attacks of Sept. 11. It had taken that long to put the al-Qaeda founder in America's crosshairs. Even so, as President Obama instructed CIA Director Leon Panetta and Joint Special Operations Commander Bill McRaven to launch the raid on the curious compound in Abbottabad, he was only half sure bin Laden was there - "This is 50-50," he told his advisers.

Who would have ever thought that revenge would be a dish best served on the National Geographic Channel? While Nat Geo may not seem like the logical home for Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden , this gripping film would be worth watching if it were on HGTV. Actually, the makers of Seal Team Six have taken more heat for their timing than for their carrier. Romneyites have been complaining that debuting this film just before Election Day gives the president a substantial PR boost, highlighting as it does one of the signal accomplishments of his administration.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Authorities have ordered all six foreign workers with the Save the Children aid group to leave the country, after alleging ties between the group and a Pakistani doctor enlisted by the CIA to help track down Osama bin Laden. A spokesman for Save the Children's offices in Pakistan, Ghulam Qadri, said Thursday that the order was issued by the Interior Ministry. Authorities had previously accused the group of helping to make a connection between Shakeel Afridi and U.S. officials, who were searching for someone to assist in confirming bin Laden's whereabouts in the military city of Abbottabad, a two-hour drive north of Islamabad.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - In the last couple of years, Washington has earmarked a bigger chunk of its aid to Pakistan for civilian projects, hoping to engender goodwill with the country's intensely anti-American populace. The latest polling suggests that the strategy has not worked. About 75 percent of Pakistanis surveyed regard the United States as an enemy, according to a poll released this week by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project. That's actually up more than 10 percent since three years ago, when 64 percent said they viewed America as an enemy.

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has arrested a Frenchman accused of being a prominent al-Qaeda militant, officials said Wednesday, a reminder of the country's vital role in the war on terror at a time of deteriorating relations with the United States. The arrest shows the additional challenges facing a country already trying to salvage its stumbling economy and pull itself out of a deepening political crisis. The president has called for parliament to elect a new prime minister Friday after Yousuf Raza Gilani was dismissed over a corruption probe.

WASHINGTON - A Senate panel expressed its outrage Thursday over Pakistan's conviction of a doctor who helped the United States track down Osama bin Laden, voting to cut aid to Islamabad by $33 million - $1 million for every year of the physician's 33-year sentence for high treason. The punitive move came on top of deep reductions the Appropriations Committee already had made to President Obama's budget request for Pakistan, a reflection of the growing congressional anger over its cooperation in combating terrorism.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA hunt for Osama bin Laden was sentenced Wednesday to 33 years in prison for treason in an administrative action under colonial-era laws that avoided a public trial. The move brought condemnation in Washington, where officials had been hoping to win freedom for Shakil Afridi, whom Pakistani intelligence agents detained three weeks after the May 2, 2011, U.S. special forces raid in the northern town of Abbottabad that ended in bin Laden's death.