An IT consultant was (unknowingly at the time) tweeted a play-by-play of the events happening in Abbottabad last night. The man, Sohaib Athar — or @ReallyVirtual on Twitter — now has over 33,000 followers. He has been hunted down by journalists among others, with his latest tweet now reading “Bin Laden is dead. I didn’t kill him. Please let me sleep now.” The previous tweet: “Reuters got to me before I could go to sleep.”
From the article:
Sohaib Athar wrote that a helicopter was hovering overhead shortly before the assault began and said that it might not be a Pakistani aircraft. He only became aware of the significance of his tweets after President Obama announced details of Bin Laden’s death.
Mr Athar’s first posting on the subject came at around 1am local time (9pm BST). He wrote: “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).” Soon after, he reported the sound of an explosion, now known to have been US forces blowing-up their damaged helicopter. “A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S”
Throughout the raid, Mr Athar was drawing on information from friends in the local area who were also online. “The few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani… People are saying it was not a technical fault and it was shot down. I heard it CIRCLE 3-4 times above, sounded purposeful.” US officials stated that the raid took less than 40 minutes, but Mr Athar said there was still a military presence in the area two hours later. “And now, a plane flying over Abbottabad…”
…
Mr Athar told the BBC’s Nosheen Abbas in Pakistan that his tweets has led to a deluge of interview requests from media organisations around the world. He also said that he was not surprised to be the only person writing about events as they happened. “I’ve been tweeting for about 5, 6 years, and been tweeting about Abbottabad because no one really talks about it. In fact, not many people use Twitter here. Everyone uses Facebook,” he said.
