Twitterati recalls Pakistan man who inadvertently live-tweeted 2011 Osama bin Laden raid

11 years ago, the leader of the extreme jihadist network Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan's Abbottabad following a raid by the Special Military Operations unit of the US Army. While the mission was supposed to be discreet, an ignorant IT-ian from Pakistan ended up live-tweeting the developments of the day, giving the world a virtual picture of one of the most successful raids in world history. Sohaib Athar, an IT consultant and alumni of the Preston University, who, in 2011, went viral is yet again the talk on Twitter, with netizens curious regarding his whereabouts.

On May 2, 2011, Athar had inadvertently tweeted about "helicopters hovering above Abbottabad at 1 am (a rare event)" from his Twitter handle @ReallyVirtual. While Athar was only wanting to have some late-night calm focusing on his software projects, little did he know that the operations were aimed at eliminating the founder of the fiercest jihadist outfit. "Go away helicopter- before I take out my giant swatter," he wrote in a thread. Ever since Athar gained the limelight as the guy who unwittingly live-blogged the US Army's deadly raid on Osama bin Laden's home, nestled in the green hills of northern Pakistan.

Within about nine minutes of Athar's Twitter thread, the Abottabad compound hiding Laden was raided and the extremist was killed. Unaware of the situation, Athar then tweeted, "Since Taliban (probably) don't have helicopters, and since they are saying it was not "outs", so must be a complicated situation in Abbottabad." Athar was struck with shock the next morning when he realised what had actually happened. In disbelief and realisation, he tweeted, "Uh oh! I am the guy who live-blogged the Osama raid without knowing it."

Twitter remembers Athar's live blog from May 2, 2011

Following his tweets, Athar became an overnight sensation. He also reportedly received a deluge of messages that accused him of being a CIA agent. He also had to face questioning by Islamabad's judicial committee set up by the then government to probe the events in Abbottabad. Now, 11 years later on the day Laden was eliminated, Twitteratis have recalled his "historical" tweets adding a dash of mockery and praise for his timely reporting of what he believed to be a "UFO...crash" when a helicopter was shot down in Bilal Town area.

(Image: AP)