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• Obama watched assault on compound housing Bin Laden in real time
• Compound was yards from Pakistan's 'Sandhurst' military academy
  
• DNA tests 99.9 per cent certain man killed WAS Bin Laden
  
• U.S. embassies on alert over Al Qaeda reprisal attacks 
  
• Obama and George W. Bush both declare: 'Justice has been done' 
  
• 
  

President Obama was watching on a TV screen as a commando gunned down Osama bin Laden. Via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a U.S. Navy Seal, the leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye.

The Seal then carried out what is known in the military as a ‘double tap’ – shooting him again, probably in the chest, to make certain he was dead.

The footage of the battle in Bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout – which played out like an episode of 24 – is said to show one of his wives acting as a human shield to protect him as he blasted away with an AK47 assault rifle.

She died, along with three other men, including one of Bin Laden’s sons. Within hours, the Al Qaeda leader’s body was buried at sea. 

Intense: President Obama watches the mission unfold at the White House along with (left) Vice President Joe Biden, (right) Defence Secretary Robert Gates, and (second right) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, alongside other Security staff, including (back left) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen, (back without a tie) National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, and (back right, white shirt) Counter-Terrorism chief John Brennan

Taking command: President Obama talks to members of the national security team in the White House situation room following the conclusion of the mission

 

Dead: Osama Bin Laden was killed in a U.S. special forces operation on his Pakistani compound

Despite President Obama claiming the master terrorist’s death made the world a ‘safer, better place’, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency declared that terrorists would ‘almost certainly’ respond.

The warning came on a day when:

■ Relations between Pakistan and the West were under intense strain amid disbelief that intelligence chiefs in Islamabad had no idea Bin Laden was living in a compound only 800 yards from the country’s leading military academy.

■ U.S. officials sought to justify the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay by claiming it provided the crucial breakthrough in hunting down Bin Laden.

■ It emerged that a terror operative captured in Pakistan in 2004 said Al Qaeda would detonate a nuclear bomb in the U.S. if Bin Laden were killed or captured.

David Cameron said Bin Laden’s death would be ‘welcomed right across our country’. 

But security was stepped up as he warned: ‘It does not mark the end of the threat we face from extremist terrorism. Indeed, we will have to be particularly vigilant in the weeks ahead.’

Last night the Prime Minister chaired a meeting of the Government’s emergency planning committee Cobra to assess the implications for the UK. Security sources have been told of specific threats against targets in North Africa and Europe. 

Officials in Britain fear a ‘lone wolf’ – currently off the security services’ radar – could be inspired to take revenge.

There is no specific intelligence pointing to any attack in response to Bin Laden’s death, but it is ‘common sense’ to be on guard, Whitehall officials say.

Possible targets include popular tourist and business locations including the Houses of Parliament, Canary Wharf and the London Eye, say security experts.

President Obama announced Bin Laden’s death in a televised statement shortly after 4am British time yesterday

He recalled the images from the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 which were ‘seared into our national memory’.  

Nearly 3,000 people were killed – including 67 Britons – when four jets hijacked by Al Qaeda extremists crashed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The attack left ‘a gaping hole in our hearts’, said the President.

Last night pictures were released of Mr Obama and his security team – including Hillary Clinton – watching the mission to kill Bin Laden in the White House’s Situation Room – relayed to the White House by satellite – which played out like an episode of TV show 24 featuring fictional counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer.

Describing the scene, President Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said: ‘It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods in the lives of the people who were assembled.

‘The minutes passed like days and the President was very concerned about the security of our personnel.’

Pit of evil: A king size bed where Bin Laden may have once slept at the secretive compound in Abbottabad. Blood from a gun battle can be seen at the foot of the mattress

Gun fight: A pool of blood on the floor suggests that one Al Qaeda member was shot close to their bed, while right, a selection of medication which was left in the bathroom

Carnage: Blood can be seen on the floor from where Bin Laden was reportedly surrounded by three men, including his son, and a woman who formed a human shield against U.S. troops

 

The President’s announcement sparked jubilant celebrations, with crowds gathering outside the White House and at Ground Zero where the Twin Towers had stood in New York.

Former President George W Bush, who was in the White House when the attacks took place, described the news as a ‘momentous achievement’.

‘America has sent an unmistakable message: no matter how long it takes, justice will be done,’ he said.

But the euphoria was tempered by warnings that Bin Laden’s supporters would carry out a wave of reprisal attacks against Western targets, including the UK.

Bin Laden's lair: The compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was half a mile from a military academy. If it had been hit in an air strike there were likely to have been civilian casualties

Defiant messages: President Obama said the world is a 'safer place', Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed to 'take the fight' to Al Qaeda and Counter Terrorism Chief John Brennan said it was a 'defining moment'

 

CIA director Leon Panetta said: ‘Though Bin Laden is dead, Al Qaeda is not. The terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge him, and we must – and will – remain vigilant and resolute.’

Foreign Secretary William Hague said: ‘This is a very serious blow to Al Qaeda but, like any organisation that has suffered a serious blow, they will want to show in some way that they are still able to operate.

‘We will still have to be even more vigilant in the coming days about the international terrorist threat.’

Success: Pakistani Army soldiers secure the compound in Abbottabad where Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. military forces

Downed: The wreckage of the U.S. military helicopter which crashed inside the high walls of Bin Laden's compound. U.S. troops destroyed the aircraft before leaving the area

A Pakistani Army soldier inspects the wreckage of the U.S. helicopter that crashed after coming under fire. There were no casualties among the U.S. Navy Seals who mounted the attack on Bin Laden's compound

 

On the lookout: Pakistani soldiers inside a cordoned off area around the Bin Laden compound after the Al Qaeda leader was killed by U.S. forces

Parts of the downed helicopter are removed from the Bin Laden compound after the attack by U.S. Navy Seals

 

Some 50 people living in Britain are believed to have attended terror training camps in Afghanistan. One suggestion is that Al Qaeda supporters who are not known to the security services could be emboldened to strike. 

Another possibility is that terror cells already plotting attacks in the UK could bring forward their plans.

It also emerged last night that the timing of the U.S. mission may have been triggered by Wikileaks.

Although the CIA has thought since September that Bin Laden was in Abbottabad, the attack on his fortress came only days after the website published fresh secret documents.

Deserted: Nestled among trees and in the shadow of Pakistan's mountains, Bin Laden's hideaway stands empty after a helicopter raid by U.S. troops that killed the terror chief. He lived there with members of his family and trusted aides

Near miss: Wreckage from the crashed U.S. helicopter hangs over a wall in the Abbottabad compound. It stalled after coming under fire from rocket-propelled grenades. Right, the remains of the helicopter are driven away on a tractor

Guarded: Pakistani soldiers today patrol the compound where Bin Laden lived and was killed, and right, police stop people as they secure the scene

Stronghold: The lay-out of Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. It was surrounded by walls up to 18 feet high

These made reference to named ‘couriers’ carrying Bin Laden’s message to his followers, and also to Abbottabad as a possible Al Qaeda bolthole. 

America has already revealed that it was led to Bin Laden by tracking a man identified as his key courier. When that courier was found in Abbottabad, the CIA began surveillance that led to the raid. 

Last night it was said the operation had to be launched before Bin Laden knew the game was up. The theory is based on a leaked U.S. Defence Department assessment of Guantanamo Bay prisoner Abu Faraj al-Libi, 40. 

This information identifies al-Libi as a chief of Al Qaeda who fled to Pakistan in 2001. He lived in Abbottabad for a year before being caught in 2005. He was then handed to the U.S., who continue to detain him.

Hideout: The Bin Laden compound was found only a few hundred yards from the military academy known as Pakistan's Sandhurst in the garrison town of Abbottabad, Pakistan

 

Abbottabad: The remote town in northern Pakistan, named after James Abbott, the British major who founded the town in 1853, sits beneath towering hills

 

We've got him, said the President

This was the dramatic moment that President Obama and Hillary Clinton watched Osama Bin Laden being shot dead.

Photos released by the White House late last night show Mr Obama and his Secretary of State in similar poses, their hands clamped over their mouths.

Together with the President’s national security team they are watching a crew of Navy Seals storm the terror chief’s hideout in Pakistan.

His fist to his mouth, Mr Obama stares intently at the screen showing Bin Laden die, left, while Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, right, holds her hand to her mouth

 

While the men in the room, arms folded, remain largely expressionless as they stare at the live feed streamed from the helmet camera of a U.S. commando, it is the expression on Mrs Clinton’s face that clearly shows the tension that they all felt.

She was unable to hide the emotion of the moment for which they had waited more than a decade.

Mr Obama, with his eyes intently focused on the scene unfolding and with his fist clenched to his mouth, was said to be ‘stony faced’ through the transmission, even at the point when a voice came over the speakers stating: ‘We’ve ID’d Geronimo’ – a code name for Bin Laden.

After the terrorist was shot, Mr Obama was said to have turned to the room and said: ‘We got him.’

Guests at a White house dinner last night rose to their feet as Barack Obama arrived with First Lady Michelle Obama, while the Speaker of the House John Boehner  congratulates the President

Barack Obama is given a standing ovation at a political dinner in the White House last night following the killing of Osama bin Laden

 

A giant flag is unveiled at Fenway Park as the national anthem is played before the game between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Angels

Players from the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Angels watch as a giant American flag is unfurled before last night's game in Boston

 

With the, mission accomplished, those present were able to breathe a sigh of relief.

With Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton as the tense operation unfolded were Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and White House Chief-of-Staff Bill Daly.

CIA Director Leon Panetta wasn’t in the photo but was at the White House at several points during the day.

The President was also seen on the phone talking to the heads of Allied countries, including British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Americans celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden in Times Square in New York, after the Al Qaeda leader was killed in Pakistan

 

 

We're 99.9% sure it's him

American officials said last night they were ‘99.9 per cent confident’ that DNA evidence proved Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Scientists compared forensic samples from the body in the Pakistan hideout with those taken from the brain of the terror mastermind’s late sister.

Photos of the corpse have also been passed to experts in facial recognition, who are comparing them to previous indisputable images of the Al Qaeda leader.

America has carried out such tests before on tissue samples from unrecognisable victims of drone bombing attacks on remote Afghan and Pakistani terror nests, who it was thought might have been Bin Laden.

The apparent speed of the Bin Laden tests raised yet more questions about the U.S. operation last night. Merely transporting samples to laboratories where DNA profiling can be carried out usually takes time, as does the process itself. 

However, new technology means that the process can be speeded up and it is entirely possible that the Americans kept a Bin Laden family DNA profile at one of their bases in Afghanistan. Indeed, one report yesterday was that the DNA test had already been conducted on the fresh corpse.

Pentagon officials said  that photos of the body and a videotape of the sea burial may be released soon to answer doubts that Bin Laden was actually killed.

In the huge manhunt for the terror leader, the CIA will have eagerly seized anything Bin Laden is believed to have touched, and searched anywhere he is believed to have stayed. Dentists and doctors will have been questioned in the hope they have retained a tooth or other organic matter.

But previous information from the years following 2001 has suggested that America has been anxiously seeking genetic samples from Bin Laden’s numerous siblings and other relatives – an indication that the CIA did not have any such samples from the Al Qaeda chief himself.

Family affair: Osama Bin Laden (second from right) was identified with the help of DNA taken from the brain of an unidentified sister, who died from cancer

 

And according to a report on America’s ABC news yesterday, a key sample had come courtesy of the death of one of his sisters in a Boston hospital several years ago, from brain cancer.

Immediately after her death, it was claimed, the FBI obtained a court order to seize her body. Her brain was then preserved, and tissue and blood samples from it helped form the DNA database that was used to match that of Bin Laden.

Such samples from siblings alone could not, however, prove 100 per cent that the new corpse is that of Bin Laden himself. Close similarity of the new corpse’s DNA profile with those taken from siblings could only show that a member of the Bin Laden family had been killed.

Further circumstantial evidence – including photos, perhaps his height (up to 6ft 6in), and location in a hideout at the centre of the Al Qaeda terror network – might then be added to provide all the proof the Americans feel necessary.

A U.S. intelligence official said last night that as well as being identified by U.S. troops on the ground, a woman believed to be one of his wives had confirmed Bin Laden was the dead man.

 

via:cnn

Navy SEALs live by an unspoken code.

"Be a quiet professional," says Chris Heben, a former SEAL with 10 years of experience carrying out missions in Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan.

"There is no room for braggarts in the SEALs," he said. "Talking hurts missions and gets people killed."

Members of the special team sent to kill Osama bin Laden inPakistan on Sunday may never talk about their role in the raid that ended a decade-long manhunt.

But there's no doubt an allegiance to secrecy played a critical role in maintaining the surprise factor necessary for success in the high-stakes gamble that was closely held even among officials in Washington.

Senior administration officials would not disclose the makeup of the team sent on the mission, but a senior defense official said a special team of SEALs was involved.

Many national media, including the New Yorker,Huffington Post and ABC News, have reported that the group is called Team Six, a highly classified band of anonymous operatives who can travel to a mission on a moment's notice from wherever they are based. They generally are not informed about who their target is until the mission is close at hand.

Former SEALs interviewed by CNN were cautious about describing how Team Six or other special teams within the SEALs work. Generally, SEALs chosen for such a special mission would be tapped by superiors because of a skill that sets them apart, yet they must also be able to jump into another member's job should that man be hurt or killed, they said.

"They need to go far beyond just being a skilled warrior," said Brandon Tyler Webb, a former SEAL who ran the sniper program at the Navy Special Warfare Command and was part of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Getting on a special team means you've established yourself as a mature and steady operator with a real world track record of high-stakes, sensitive missions," said Webb, who authored the book "The 21st Century Sniper."

"The guys behind this mission [to capture or kill bin Laden] have never given anyone a reason to doubt that they are trustworthy and very focused," he said. "They are the best of the best."

The image of the SEAL belly crawling his way through the jungle is just a bunch of Hollywood nonsense, Heben said.

"The guys who don't make it through SEAL training are the Rambo wannabes," he said. "If you cannot work in a team format, but also function autonomously, you won't last for very long."

Air, Sea, Land

The fighting force known as the Navy SEALs -- short for Sea, Air and Land teams -- has its origins in World War II when the United States realized that to invade Japan, it needed savvy, quick-thinking fighters who could perform reconnaissance at sea.

Beyond tactical expertise, the troops needed to have extraordinary physical strength.

According to the SEAL web site, they became known as jack-of-all-trade troops, able to survey China's Yangtze River disguised as Chinese nationals in 1945 or conduct demolition raids on railroad tunnels and bridges along the Korean coast during the Korean War.

The SEALs did not get their name until after President Kennedy spoke about his admiration for special forces troops and his hope that the U.S. military would better enhance its capacity for unconventional warfare, counter guerilla and clandestine operations.

There was a new and pressing need for more advanced military techniques during the time. Among other missions, the SEALs were deployed to act as advisers and train South Vietnamese commandos.

Vietnam was the first American war to be broadcast widely on television and media, and woven into popular culture for mainstream consumption. It solidified the image of the SEALs as the ultimate tough guy, a reputation burnished by reports of SEALs' ability to do face-to-face combat with Vietcong and stories of their work with the CIA.

The relationship between America's spy agency and its elite troops was crucial to gaining real-time intelligence for missions sometimes carried out at the last minute -- perhaps an asset more important now than ever, experts have said. The war against al Qaeda is just as much about obtaining reliable intelligence as it is winning on the battlefield.

SEALs victories have been many. During Vietnam, they performed a covert operation called the Phoenix Program which captured Vietcong sympathizers.

In the Iran-Iraq war, SEAL teams conducted missions to counter Iranian mine-laying boats. The first military flag officer to set foot in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, was a SEAL in charge of all special operations for Central Command, according to the SEALs history page on its web site.

The site says SEALs commanded Task Force K-BAR which oversaw the Navy, Air Force and Coalition Special Operation Forces at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom which carried out more than 75 special reconnaissance and direct action missions, destroyed more than 500,000 pounds of explosives and weapons, identified enemy personnel and conducted operations that searched for terrorists trying to flee the country by sea.

The largest deployment of SEALs in the group's history came during the Iraq War, with SEALs directing missions that included securing all of the southern oil infrastructures of the Al-Faw peninsula and the off-shore gas and oil terminals, clearing critical waterways so that aid could flow into the country. Several high-value terrorist targets were captured by the SEALs, including Ahmed Hashim Abed, the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater guards in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004.

The SEALs most recent high-profile mission came in 2009 when a SEAL team rescued the American captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama, which had been hijacked by Somali pirates off Somalia's coast. SEAL snipers were on the deck of a ship and fired simultaneously three times, hitting three pirates who were holding the captain.

Ultimate test

SEAL training, Heben said, is "the ultimate test for a guy."

It's social, physical and psychological and tests how well the man can work with others given intense pressure and pain.

SEALs train between 18 and 24 months, with the pinnacle of training coming during Hell Week, five days in which trainees are constantly cold, hungry, sleep deprived and wet.

During Hell week, instructors deprive the participants of sleep, then let them hit the rack just long enough for REM to begin, Webb said.

Instructors are constantly yelling, "Go ahead, quit if you like!"

Many do. The attrition rate for SEAL training is about 90 percent, Heben and Webb said.

Most recruits drop out long before Hell Week because they can't take the training, which involves running 15 miles, topped with a 2-mile open water swim and other intense physical conditioning, Webb said.

"Every day is like climbing Mount Everest," Heben said. "You just keep doing what's in front of you. You don't look up."

Training instructors make you feel like "you're part of an Indian tribe," Heben said.

"There's a lot of back patting and verbal reinforcement. You feel like you're part of something and you're doing great things. But they definitely let you know when you're not doing something right."

The discipline from SEAL training was intensely satisfying to Heben in his early 20s. He had gone to college, and though he was very bright, he was spending more time working out than on his class work. He was restless.

Four walls and books just weren't his thing. Despite unimpressive grades, at 23 he got a job working in home mortgages making $63,000 a year.

Then one day he read an article about the SEALs in Popular Mechanics.

"I enlisted in the Navy immediately," Heben said. "I asked the recruiter, 'What is the fastest track to becoming a SEAL? I'll take that.'"

Though he won't discuss specific areas of countries where he's carried out missions, he said that he normally trained for missions on exact mock-ups of a targeted location. He's confident that the special team knew the compound where bin Laden was hiding as if the SEALs had built it themselves.

It's also no coincidence that the team acted on one of the least moonlit nights on the calendar, Heben said. They certainly weighed heavily a possible attack from a Pakistani military school which sits a short distance from the compound, and they went over many scenarios of attack, aiming to avoid civilian casualties. Go behind the scenes of the raid

SEALs leave nothing to chance. A target is a target. It is an objective, a mission well trained and prepared for, Heben said.

Even if that target turns out to be Osama bin Laden.

As news of Osama bin Laden's death made its way across the globe Sunday night, Internet traffic exploded.

Twitter: At the news event's peak, Twitter said that users were sending off more than 4,000 tweets per second. That makes the volume of tweets surrounding the event either the second or third-highest in Twitter's history.

That volume is on par with the 4,064 tweets-per-second peak of this year's Super Bowl, but still far short of the 6,939 tweets per second record set when Japan brought in the 2011 new year.

Twitter recently has played an increasingly important role as a disseminator of breaking news, and the bin Laden story was another prime example.

Just before White House officials told the news media that bin Laden had been killed, Keith Urbahn, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's chief of staff, spread the word via Twitter.

"So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn."

Urbahn later said he was tipped off by a well-connected network TV news producer.

Other news agencies quickly followed with tweets, and the microblogging site quickly thereafter exploded with information about the event.

Urbahn was actually not the first to break the news. A Pakistani IT consultant named Sohaib Athar with the Twitter handle ReallyVirtual, who lives in the city of Abbottabad where bin Laden was killed, unwittingly live-tweeted the event as it was happening.

"A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad ... I hope its not the start of something nasty" Athar tweeted at about 5:00 p.m. ET on Sunday.

Google Trends ranked the keywords "osama bin laden dead" as "volcanic," the highest level it assigns for a trending topic.

Sunday was not the first time that the term "osama bin laden dead" peaked on Google. On Sept. 24, 2006, a French newspaper l'Est Republicain reported a story supposedly based on leaked Saudi intelligence documents that said bin Laden had been killed a month earlier. The CIA and French governments quickly denounced that report as false.

Google Insights for Search ranked that 2006 story as the biggest search event for bin Laden, but the tool has not updated yet with Sunday's data.

News sites: The bin Laden story resulted in a peak of more than 4.1 million page views per second on the news websites supported and tracked by content delivery network Akamai. Akamai delivers about 20% of the Internet's content, and it supports popular news sites like nytimes.com, reuters.com, bbc.com and usatoday.com.

The peak occurred at about 11:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, right as President Obama's news conference began. Just an hour before the news broke, there were roughly 2.5 million page views per second on those pages.

Despite the unusually high volume of traffic, Akamai said it did not rank in the company's top 10 news events for highest page-view peaks.

The largest peak in Internet traffic came at noon on June 24, 2010, when there were simultaneous World Cup qualifying matches as well as the longest-ever Wimbledon match -- all being played at the same time. Those events resulted in a peak of 10.4 million page views per second on the news sites Akamai supports.

Last week's royal wedding ranked sixth on Akamai's list, with more than 5 million page views per second. It was the second-highest non-sports-related Internet event, right behind the 2010 U.S. mid-term elections.

All of the largest peaks in the top 13 were from events that occurred in 2010 or 2011 -- which is unsurprising, since Internet usage continues to rise globally. But ranking at No. 14 is the inauguration of President Obama, which occurred in January 2008.

The biggest Internet spikes tend to overwhelm servers and rendered some websites unresponsive. News of Michael Jackson's death famously brought down Google News, TMZ.com, latimes.com and even AOL Instant Messenger, thanks to high traffic demands

First, the U.S. Army's Captain Jonathan Springer developed the iPhone app, Tactical Nav, for battlefield mapping and artillery sighting. Now, Ft. Bragg has developed an integrated system for many of the same things based on the Android operating system. According to the Army's Web page on the project, the security of the system is paramount.

"The device, known as a Joint Battle Command-Platform, or JBC-P Handheld, is the first developed under an Army effort to devise an Android-based smartphone framework and suite of applications for tactical operations. The government-owned framework, known as Mobile /Handheld Computing Environment, or CE, ensures that regardless of who develops them, applications will be secure and interoperable with existing mission command systems so information flows seamlessly across all echelons of the force."

This framework was originally prototyped by MITRE. Further development is under the aegis of the Army's Software Engineering Directorate in Huntsville, Alabama.

The Army is inviting outside developers to create apps for the phone. The "Mobile /Handheld CE development kit" will be released to devs in July. The device's baseline app suite includes "mapping, blue force tracking, Tactical Ground Reporting, or TIGR tactical graphics and critical messaging (such as SPOT reports, Medevac and Mayday)."

Given the system being developed for is profoundly unlikely to make its way onto the marketplace for some time, if ever, it may not be as appealing as developing for the Android Market. Of course, designing an app that saves lives or prosecutes a war may be rewarding in itself to some developers.

The fact that the system is based on a technology many soldiers will come into service knowing, that the framework allows extensive, relatively quick adaptation through app creation and was created to interact with different outside structures, such as various radio networks, may insure its rapid adoption.

Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 1St Armored Division will test the devices during the "Network Integration Rehearsal" at New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range in October.

A4A

Last year, the Army also sponsored the Apps 4 the Army challenge. Over 75 days, the Army evaluated 53 submissions, choosing 15 winners and honorable mentions.

Harry Stewart looks around the slowly filling ballroom in an Orlando, Fla., hotel and brightens.

"I haven't seen some of these guys in over 66 years," he says. "Some I haven't seen since I entered the service, and others since I left at the end of the war. This is very exciting."

The war Stewart is referring to is World War II, when the Army was still segregated. Stewart is part of a reunion of Red Tail pilots, members of the 332nd Fighter Group. They're part of the Tuskegee Airmen, an organization composed of World War II fliers and the thousands of people on the ground who made their missions possible.

The event's organizer, Leo Gray, says he realized earlier this year that time was zipping by. One of their members, Lee Archer, the country's only World War II black ace pilot (his plane was emblazoned with five swastikas, one for each confirmed German plane downed), died last year.

Gray wanted to bring the remaining pilots together again. "Nothing official," he explained. "I wanted this to be social, to give the guys plenty of time to spend with each other, because you never know what's going to happen, or when somebody's going to go next."

It's a pretty safe guess that "next" may not be too far off: The youngest Red Tail pilot is 86, the oldest 96. Many are infirm and unable to travel. Others could only come with the assistance of younger family members. But about a dozen ended up drinking a little, laughing a lot and sharing war stories.

Tales Of The Red Tails

Alexander Jefferson, a small, trim man with a silver mustache, told of being shot down on Aug. 12, 1944. He was strafing German radar stations when his plane was hit. He lost consciousness after the crash, and awakened to a German pointing a gun at him and shouting, "Naeger! Naeger!"

"I thought, 'Oh, crap — even in Germany!' " Jefferson laughed, shaking his head. "But it turned out he wasn't saying the other word — that was their word for negro."

In fact, the German soldier's commanding officer saluted Jefferson when he took the pilot into custody. "I was treated like an officer the whole time I spent in POW camp," Jefferson said.

Jefferson was poring over photos with Hiram Mann, an ebullient octogenarian whose impish personality earned him the nickname "Gremlin."

Mann said that when he entered the service, he was "a little older than some of the other guys."

"I was 21 and married," he said.

He was reporting back to base to fly an important mission when he was grounded by the base flight surgeon, who thought Mann and his buddies hadn't spent enough downtime before their next flight.

Mann's plane, Boss Lady (his affectionate nickname for his wife), was assigned to another pilot — who didn't make it back. "I often think about it," Mann said. "And I think, 'There but for the grace of God go I.' But he could have been in a different space than I would have been, I don't know."

The date for the gathering, March 24, was chosen to coincide with the 66th anniversary of the Mission to Berlin, the longest nonstop mission in the European theater. The Red Tails took off from their base at Ramitelli, Italy, and accompanied a group of bombers to Berlin, where they destroyed the Daimler Benz tank assembly plant. They returned covered in glory and citations — until they got back to the States.

"Coming back on the boat," Jefferson recalled, "got to New York Harbor, the flags waving, the Statue of Liberty. Walked down the gangplank, and a little soldier at the bottom said, 'Whites to the right, niggers to the left.' "

Welcome home.

A Delayed Salute

The Tuskegee Airmen, and especially the Red Tails, would be held up as examples of excellence in the black community for decades.

Robert Martin likes to say he flew 63 1/2 missions during the war. What would have been his 64th ended when he was shot down over then-Yugoslavia.

His daughter Noelle said that growing up, she sometimes had to sit on herself to not brag about her father. "I always wanted to say: There's my dad, and he's a Tuskegee Airman," she said.

Leo Gray's daughter, Kathy Bryant, said she'd think about her father when she was being racially harassed in her workplace and say to herself, "What he did was harder. If he can do it, you can do it."

But they were off much of America's radar screen. Say "war hero," and the visual that came to mind was automatically white. Many of the airmen became involved in the country's civil rights movement, fighting what historians now call a second front.

"We fought fascism and Nazism, and won," said one of the airmen firmly. "Then we had to come home and fight racism. And we were going to win that, too."

They did. The Red Tails' stellar war records demolished the canard that blacks weren't intelligent or coordinated enough to operate airplanes. It forever erased doubts about black pilots' patriotism and bravery. And, said Col. George Hardy, when the Air Force became a separate branch of service after the war, "a lot of officers that had been in the Army Air Force were now in important positions in the Air Force, and they remembered what they'd seen."

The Air Force commissioned a study on integrating the branch in November 1947, and in April 1948, the Air Force announced it would integrate — this was before President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, desegregating the armed forces.

It was no small feat. And eventually, the Red Tails received accolades from beyond the black community: In 2007, President George W. Bush (the son of George H.W. Bush, a World War II fighter pilot) presented them with the Medal of Honor in the Capitol Rotunda.

At the conclusion of his welcome, Bush told the airmen that he'd like to offer a gesture, a symbol "to help atone for all the unreturned salutes and unforgivable indignities" they had endured over the years. "So on behalf of the office I hold and a country that honors you, I salute you," he said. They saluted back.

Their heightened profile has made them rock stars. At their hotel, the Red Tails couldn't finish meals without being interrupted and asked to sign autographs. Eager parents pushed shy children toward them, asking if they'd take a picture.

"You don't get this now," one mother told her reluctant 4-year-old, "but you'll be glad you have this later on. This is history, honey."

Navy men and women meeting in the Red Tails' hotel asked if they'd speak to their group and take a few photos. The lines went through the lobby as men and women in uniform — and several retired military — waited patiently to have their picture taken with the pilots.

Looking on, Capt. Art Pruitt smiled. "It's funny, we were just watching everybody taking pictures of them — it's like the paparazzi: These guys are rock stars. And to be able to honor them this way, it's just an honor and a privilege."

Ivory Coast's violent political struggle ended Monday when strongman Laurent Gbagbo was pried from an underground bunker at the presidential residence in Abidjan and captured Monday.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reported that Gbagbo was seized by a combination of French forces under a U.N. mandate and troops loyal to democratically elected leader Alassane Ouattara. A spokesman for Gbagbo said the former leader surrendered without resistance.

"The nightmare is over for the people of Ivory Coast," said the country U.N. ambassador, Youssoufou Bamba. He said Gbagbo had been taken to "a safe place" and would be brought to justice.

The arrest came after a pre-dawn attack by French forces Monday.

Issard Soumahro, a pro-Ouattara fighter at the scene, told The Associated Press that the ground offensive to seize Gbagbo began after the French launched airstrikes until at least 3 a.m. Monday. When the strikes ended, Ouattara's fighters began their final push. They entered the presidential compound just after midday as a French armored advance secured large parts of Abidjan.

"We attacked and forced in a part of the bunker. He was there with his wife and his son. He wasn't hurt, but he was tired and his cheek was swollen from where a soldier had slapped him," Soumahro said.

TV footage showed Gbagbo emerging from his bunker in a white sleeveless undershirt, and then donning a colorful print shirt. He was reportedly interrogated and brought to Abidjan's Golf Hotel, where Ouattara has been trying to run his presidency since the Nov. 28 vote.

Witnesses at the hotel said Gbagbo was brought in with his wife, Simone, as well as his son and about 50 members of his entourage.

Gbagbo could be forced to answer for his soldiers' crimes, but an international trial threatens to stoke the divisions that Ouattara will now have to heal.

"[Ouattara] didn't want to come to power this way, through the barrel of a gun," said Richard Downie, an Africa expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "He was elected fairly and freely. But this is the situation he was dealt. It's going to be incredibly difficult for him to bring the country together."

Residents of the commercial capital of Abidjan refrained from celebrating in public after word of Gbagbo's arrest, still fearful of the hundreds of armed fighters that continued to prowl the streets, refusing to believe their leader had been seized. Sporadic gunfire echoed across the city Monday night.

Gbagbo's capture ends a deadly presidential tug of war that began after he lost the U.N.-certified elections to Ouattara but refused to cede power. Gbagbo declared that he was the country's elected leader and vowed never to surrender.

The months-long dispute — in which more than a million civilians fled their homes and untold numbers were killed — pushed the world's largest cocoa producer to the brink of renewed civil war. Gbagbo's forces controlled the commercial capital, Abidjan, while Ouattara was contained inside his headquarters inside the Golf Hotel, surrounded by U.N. peacekeepers.

The tables turned rapidly when pro-Ouattara forces swept through the country and into Abidjan, Quist-Arcton said. U.N. and French attack helicopters have been bombarding the presidential residence to force the strongman from the bunker he has occupied for weeks.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pledged support Monday to the new government of Ivory Coast and said he hoped to speak to Ouattara as soon as possible.

"This is an end of a chapter that should never have been," Ban said. "We have to help them to restore stability, rule of law, and address all humanitarian and security issues."

Ban said that Gbagbo's "physical safety should be ensured, and I'm going to urge that."

Ouattara's ambassador to France, Ali Coulibaly, told France-Info radio that Gbagbo would be "treated with humanity."

"We must not in any way make a royal gift to Laurent Gbagbo in making him a martyr," Coulibaly said. "He must be alive, and he must answer for the crimes against humanity that he committed."

The former US president’s visit would have been his first to Europe since his waterboarding disclosure in Decision Points.

George W Bush has had to call off a trip to Switzerland next weekend amid planned protests by human rights groups over the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and the threat of a warrant for his arrest.

David Sherzer, a spokesman for the former US president, confirmed the move in an email to the Associated Press. "We regret that the speech has been cancelled," he said. "President Bush was looking forward to speaking about freedom and offering reflections from his time in office."

The visit would have been Bush's first to Europe since he admitted in his autobiography, Decision Points, in November that he had authorised the use of waterboarding – simulated drowning – on detainees at Guantánamo accused of links with al-Qaida. Whether out of concern over the protests or the arrest warrant, it is an extraordinary development for a former US president to have his travel plans curtailed in this way, and amounts to a victory for human rights campaigners.

Since the arrest of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998, international leaders can no longer be confident of immunity. Israeli politicians have cancelled trips to London and elsewhere for fear of arrest warrants.

Bush had been due to deliver a speech at a dinner in Geneva organised by the United Israel Appeal, a US-based organisation that helps Jews move to Israel. Robert Equey, the organisation's lawyer, was quoted by the Swiss daily Tribune de Genève at the weekend saying that the decision to abandon the speech was because of concern that the protests might lead to violence, not fear of an arrest warrant.

"The calls to demonstrate were sliding into dangerous terrain," Equey said. "The organisers claimed to be able to maintain order, but warned they could not be held responsible for any outbursts." The threat of an arrest warrant had not been a factor in the decision. The Centre for Constitutional Rights, the human rights group seeking an arrest warrant, said: "Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he cancelled his trip to avoid our case."

Human rights campaigners said they would seek arrest warrants wherever Bush planned to travel outside the US.

Folco Galli, a spokesman for the Swiss justice ministry, told the Associated Press that the department's initial assessment was that Bush would have enjoyed immunity from prosecution for any actions taken while in office.

But Amnesty International said today that it had sent a detailed factual and legal analysis to Swiss prosecutors, claiming there was sufficient information to open a criminal investigation.

"Such an investigation would be mandatory under Switzerland's international obligations if President Bush entered the country," Amnesty said.

It added: "Anywhere in the world that he travels, President Bush could face investigation and potential prosecution for his responsibility for torture and other crimes in international law, particularly in any of the 147 countries that are party to the UN convention against torture."

Organisers of the protest had called on participants to bring a shoe, commemorating the Iraqi journalist who threw one at Bush during a 2008 press conference in Baghdad, to a rally outside the hotel where Bush was due to speak.

Human rights groups had planned to submit a 2,500-page case against Bush in Geneva tomorrow over the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo. The Bush administration claims that waterboarding does not amount to torture, but human rights organisations and the Obama administration have said it does.

The document will no longer be filed in court but will be released at a media event. It focuses on two former Guantánamo Bay detainees, Majid Khan and former al-Jazeera correspondent Sami el-Hajj. Speaking before the cancellation of the visit, lawyers for the two said the trip was the first opportunity for the former president to face the legal consequences of authorising waterboarding and other techniques.

"What we have in Switzerland is a Pinochet opportunity," said Gavin Sullivan, lawyer for the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, backing the claim together with the US-based Centre for Constitutional Rights.

"Bush enjoys no immunity from prosecution. As head of state he authorised and condoned acts of torture, and the law is clear – where a person has been responsible for torture, all states have an obligation under international law to open an investigation and prosecute." He added: "Bush will be pursued wherever he goes as a war criminal and torturer."

Legal proceedings under way in Spain accuse White House legal advisers, known as the Bush Six, of criminal wrongdoing for advising that the techniques were legal.

"Nobody – from those who administered the practices to those at the top of the chain of command – is under a shield of absolute immunity for the practices of secret detention, extraordinary rendition and torture," said Martin Scheinin, UN special rapporteur on human rights and professor of public international law at the European University Institute. "Legally this case is quite clear. Bush does not enjoy immunity as a former head of state, and he has command responsibility for the decisions that were taken."

Wanted: politicians who faced arrest

The arrest of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998 ended the immunity leaders had largely enjoyed. Britain had no choice but to act on an extradition request by Spain over the murders of Spanish citizens in Chile when he was in power.

The targeting of US politicians began in earnest during the Bush administration after the opening of Guantánamo Bay detention centre, the invasion of Iraq and revelations of secret CIA prisons overseas and rendition flights.

In 2005, the then US secretary of state, Donald Rumsfeld, was threatened with arrest in Germany for war crimes relating to abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Rumsfeld threatened to pull out of a prestigious defence conference in Munich until German prosecutors assured him that he would not be apprehended.

Israeli politicians have also been the subject of arrest attempts on visits to Europe. A British court issued a warrant in 2009 for Israel's then foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, below, on behalf of Palestinian victims. But she postponed her trip to London, saying scheduling problems were to blame.

Another Israeli politician, deputy prime minister Dan Meridor, cancelled a trip to London last year after being told he may face an arrest warrant or some other legal action, apparently over the Israeli killing of Turkish activists on a ship bound for Gaza.