LAHORE: Days after Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi refrained from calling Osama bin Laden a terrorist, former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Wednesday followed suit but courted a similar controversy after he hesitated to call the former al Qaeda chief a terrorist.
“We should decide in the parliament once and for all if [bin Laden] was a martyr or not. If this is an issue, there needs to be a discussion on it,” the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader told anchor Fareeha Idrees on her television programme.
کیا اسامہ بن لادن شہید ہے؟ فریحہ ادریس کا سوال۔
شاہد خاقان عباسی بھی بکری ہوگئے۔۔۔۔ pic.twitter.com/dWTL081QNX
— UNewsTv.Com (@UNewsTv) June 22, 2021
When asked specifically whether he considered bin Laden a martyr, Abbasi said: “Let the parliament debate the issue.”
At this, Idrees told Abbasi that as a former prime minister, his opinion on the issue mattered. “Even a former prime minister is smaller from the parliament in stature,” he replied.
Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the deadly 9/11 attacks, was killed in 2011 by US special forces after eluding detection for nearly a decade.
Last year, Prime Minister Imran landed himself in hot waters after he told parliament that the al Qaeda leader had been “martyred” by the US.
“I will never forget how we Pakistanis were embarrassed when the Americans came into Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, martyred him,” Imran said in his speech.
