By IANS,
Islamabad : The Abbottabad mansion where Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed has turned into a local attraction with hundreds turning up everyday to look at it. A police official said he favours destroying the building to prevent it being used by militants as a rallying point.
Osama was killed by US Navy SEALs who stormed his hideout May 2.
Streams of curious people gather outside the house everyday to click photographs or try to peer into the building from the roofs of neighbouring houses, Wall Street Journal said.
A police official said he was in favour of destroying the building as soon as possible.
He was concerned that militants could use the complex as a symbolic rallying point, or stage an attack on the crowds to avenge Osama’s killing.
“I would not want it to be something like a museum or a shrine,” Wall Street Journal quoted the police official as saying.
“The thing should go away – he (Osama) has created enough of a problem already.”
However, a government official suggested that the site could be a permanent tourist destination for Abbottabad.
“One thing we’re hoping is that more tourists will come to visit now,” said Mohammed Azfar Nisar, Abbottabad’s assistant coordination officer.
“They are already there. in fact. Even if we don’t make it into a museum, people will still come. This could be a blessing in disguise for us.”
The debate is similar to the one that took place when Adolf Hitler committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin 1945.
For over six decades, the bunker’s location near the Brandenburg Gate was concealed from the public as there were fears it could become a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis.
A man called Mohammed Arshad Waled Niqab Khan had purchased the land for Osama’s house in Abbottabad from four sellers for a total of about $50,000 over the course of 2004 and 2005, according to land records accessed by The Wall Street Journal.
The records show that the buyer came from an area called Tangi in Charsadda district in northwestern Pakistan.
He bought the last plot from Qazi Mahfouz ul-Haq.
The buyer told Mahfouz that he wanted the extra plot to build a house for his “uncle”.
“He was a very ordinary man – nice in his talking, but nothing special or extraordinary,” Mahfouz was quoted as saying.