Community Corner

Patch Retrospective: The Death of Osama bin Laden

A look back at the terrorist leader's passing one year later.

It was one of the most historic games of cat-and-mouse ever.

But when a team of Navy SEALs finally captured Osama bin Laden in a walled compound in northern Pakistan and subsequently killed him, the thousands of miles separating New York from the Middle East seemed to disappear.

From the streets of central Brooklyn to Ground Zero itself, the news sparked jubilant shouts from the citizenry and the staff of .

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Residents of Bed-Stuy were mostly gratified at hearing the news, though some felt he should have been kept alive.

Like the 9/11 attacks that prompted the operation in the first place, bin Laden's demise seemed to effect every New Yorker personally.

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Airline passengers and employees at Kennedy International Airport were aware of the need for beefed-up security measures, but didn't feel impeded by it.

It was late in the evening of Sunday May 1, 2011 that President Barack Obama had announced that bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader and terrorist largely responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and the 2001 hijacking of four commercial airliners used in suicide attacks on the WTC, Pentagon and the White House, had been captured and killed by U.S. operations. No Americans were harmed in bin Laden's capture.

Tuesday night, Obama made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan to meet with President Hamid Karzai and give a live address to the nation on the war on terror.

"Here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon," he said.


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