In a digital heist straight out of a spy thriller, a rogue hacker crew infiltrated Pakistan’s government servers, unleashing a bombshell: leaked emails that expose a jaw-dropping conspiracy between the Obama administration, CIA and Pakistani brass to stage Osama bin Laden’s death as a grand geopolitical charade.
In February 2023, an Indian hacker group known as Sidewinder breached Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry server, extracting a staggering 7.5 terabytes of data, including emails, chats, and documents.
While only a small fraction of this data—approximately 2 gigabytes, containing 10,000 to 12,000 emails—was released publicly on a Telegram channel linked to an individual claiming ties to Sidewinder, the leak has sparked intense speculation.
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| Staged Drama? Obama, Biden, and national security team monitor the scripted Bin Laden mission, May 1, 2011. |
Among the files hacked by Sidewinder was a bombshell email from a government source that has seemingly confirmed a remarkable conspiracy theory: the claim that Osama bin Laden’s death in 2011 was staged by substituting a duplicate in his place.
The email in question, dated December 23, 2021, was sent from an address tied to sco.gov.pk, a domain associated with the Special Communications Organization (SCO), an entity controlled by the Pakistani military at the time.
The email’s contents primarily focus on internal Pakistani political dynamics, including threats to overthrow then-Prime Minister Imran Khan for his perceived allegiance to India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and his handling of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a domestic terrorist group.
Notably, it references Khan’s decision to release an Indian pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman, captured in 2019—an act the email’s author deems a sign of Khan’s subservience to India.
However, the email takes a dramatic turn when it pivots to a discussion of high-profile terrorist figures. It explicitly states that the death of “Aeman al-zeware” (likely a misspelling of Ayman al-Zawahiri, a key al-Qaeda leader and Osama bin Laden’s close associate) would be faked, just as bin Laden’s death allegedly was.
According to the email, bin Laden’s demise in the 2011 U.S. raid in Abbottabad was a ruse, with a duplicate planted to deceive the world.
Intriguingly, seven months after this email was sent, on July 31, 2022, the CIA announced al-Zawahiri’s death in a drone strike in Afghanistan—raising questions about whether his demise, too, might have been staged as the email predicted.
The email’s author also hints at their own significance, suggesting that if captured by Indian forces, they would be freed through “another Kandahar operation.” This is a reference to the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC 814 by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, who forced the Indian government to release imprisoned terrorists by landing the plane in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
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| On 24 December 1999, five members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen hijacked the Indian Airlines Flight IC 814 and landed it in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and demanded Indian govt to release some terrorists who were captured by them. |
This allusion implies the writer could be a high-value operative or terrorist with powerful allies, adding a layer of intrigue to the document’s claims.
The email’s broader context syncs eerily with real-world events, adding credibility to its claims. For instance, Imran Khan was indeed ousted as Pakistan’s prime minister via a no-confidence vote on April 10, 2022, just months after the email’s date, marking a historic first in the country’s political history. He was later arrested on May 9, 2023, by paramilitary forces, as the email’s warnings about his fate partially foreshadowed.
Yet the claim about bin Laden’s faked death remains the most explosive revelation, echoing long-standing conspiracy theories that have questioned the official narrative of the Abbottabad raid.
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| Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri |
Skeptics might argue that the email’s sensational claims lack corroboration. Only 2 gigabytes of the 7.5-terabyte breach have been made public, and the individual analyzing the leak—who manually sifted through the files—has not released the full dataset.
Efforts to obtain the complete breach from the Telegram channel admin were rebuffed, with the admin claiming Sidewinder is state-sponsored by India and that the full data would only be shared with the Indian government.
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| The hacker confirmed the Sidewinder hacker group is state-sponsored by the Indian government and he will only give the whole data breach to the Indian government |
Still, the leak has ignited debate. If genuine, the email suggests a coordinated effort within Pakistan’s military establishment to manipulate perceptions of major terrorist figures’ fates, potentially for political or strategic gain.
Osama bin Laden’s death, announced by the U.S. on May 2, 2011, was a defining moment of the Obama administration, yet conspiracy theories have persisted—fueled by the lack of public photos of his body and the rapid burial at sea.
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| Kepa Garraza, The Burial 3 (study), 2016. Oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm. Courtesy the artist/Galería ATM Altamira, Gijón |
As of now, the Sidewinder breach and its revelations remain a tantalizing puzzle. The analyst, leveraging open-source intelligence (OSINT) skills, claims to have identified the email’s sender but has withheld that information for privacy reasons.
Without access to the full 7.5-terabyte dataset or further leaks, the theory that bin Laden’s death was faked hinges on this single, provocative email—a detail in a much larger intrigue.
