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The Navy Seal who assassinated Osama bin Laden signalled he had done so with the words: "For God and country - Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo."
With Barack Obama listening in, the special forces soldier then radioed that "Geronimo", the codename for Bin Laden, had been "killed in action".
Hearing the transmission in the White House, President Obama reportedly declared: "We got him."
The Seal - whose identity will never be revealed - gave his account of the assault on the compound in Abbottabad,Pakistan, in an interview with The New Yorker magazine. He said: "There was never any question of detaining or capturing him - it wasn't a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees."
The claim contradicts White House assurances that the objective was to take Bin Laden alive as long as he was not carrying "an improvised explosive device on his body" or a weapon.
The Seal told how he stepped into the terror leader's bedroom and "trained the infrared laser of his M4 [rifle] on Bin Laden's chest.
"The al Qaeda chief, who was wearing a tan shalwar kameez and a prayer cap on his head, froze; he was unarmed." The Seal fired, hitting Bin Laden once in the chest and above the left eye.
Moments earlier, another Seal had entered the room and was confronted by two of Bin Laden's wives. One screamed and appeared to charge at him. The Seal shot her in the calf and then, "fearing that one or both of the women were wearing suicide jackets, he stepped forward, wrapped them in a bear hug and drove them aside.
"He would almost certainly have been killed had they blown themselves up, but ... he would have absorbed some of the blast and potentially saved the two Seals behind him." Neither woman was wearing an explosive vest.
Five days after the May 2 operation, Mr Obama went to Kentucky to meet the 24-strong assault team. According to the article, he did not ask the Seals which one fired the fatal shot and they did not volunteer the information
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.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23974848
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