Trump takes credit for alert on Osama a year before 9/11, lauds Seals for ‘shot in the head’

US President Donald Trump took credit for warning about Osama bin Laden a year before the al-Qaeda leader perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, as he lauded US Navy Seals for putting a “bullet in his head” and dumping his corpse into the “dark abyss”.

“History will never forget that it was the SEALs who stormed the compound (of) Osama bin Laden and put a bullet in his head,” Trump said in a speech at Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday during a special celebration to mark the US Navy’s 250th birthday. Trump went on to add that one year before al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre twin towers in September 2001, he had warned about bin Laden.

“Please remember I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year before he blew up the World Trade Centre. And I said, ‘You got to watch Osama bin Laden.’ And the fake news would never let me get away with that statement unless it was true. But I said one year before...I saw somebody named Osama bin Laden, and I didn’t like it. And you got to take care of him. They didn’t do it. A year later, he blew up the World Trade Centre,” Trump said.

“So got to take a little credit, because nobody else is going to give it to me. You know the old story, they don’t give you credit. Just take it yourself,” he said.

Trump said it was the US Navy that “dumped” bin Laden’s “wretched corpse off the decks” of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson “to sink into the dark abyss”.

In May 2011, US Navy Seals carried out an operation that killed bin Laden, who was hiding in a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.