Together, we hunted down bin Laden: US tells UNSC on 25th anniversary of 9/11 attacks

The United States told the UN Security Council that “we hunted down” Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as the 15-nation body adopted its first presidential statement on counter-terrorism in five years on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

The UN Security Council (UNSC) on Friday held a briefing marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11, carried out by Al-Qaeda terrorists who crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Centre twin towers in 2001. “Together, we hunted down bin Laden. Our coalition destroyed ISIS’s caliphate. We killed al-Baghdadi and al-Zawahiri,” US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said, referring to leaders of militant groups. He made the remarks while speaking at the Security Council briefing titled ‘Threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts’.

Sitting at the horseshoe UNSC table as the US envoy made the remarks was Pakistan, which currently sits in the Security Council as a non-permanent member and whose two-year term will end in December this year.

The 9/11 terror attacks were orchestrated by bin Laden, who was hiding in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad and was killed by US Navy SEALs in a raid in May 2011.

In his remarks, Waltz listed the major terror attacks that have taken place in the countries making up the 15-nation UNSC. “Colleagues, as I look around the table, everyone in this room, all on this Council, from Latvia to Liberia, everyone has lost men and women in uniform confronting terrorism in the years since. So, for most of you, September 11 is sadly not the only terror attack in your national memory. We should take stock of that. We should remember that,” Waltz said.

The US envoy listed the 2014 Peshawar school massacre in Pakistan that killed about 130 children and the July 7, 2005 London bombings. The UNSC also adopted a presidential statement which reaffirmed its “unequivocal condemnation” of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, Arlington (Virginia) and Pennsylvania.

The statement is the UNSC’s first presidential statement on counter-terrorism in five years.

It condemned all acts, methods and practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, in all their forms and manifestations, wherever, whenever and by whoever committed.