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This must be the 21st century: Pakistani IT consultant liveblogs the raid on Twitter
Bonnie Malkin, The Telegraph (UK)Sohaib Athar, who uses the Twitter handle "ReallyVirtual", recorded the helicopter attack that led to the death of the al-Qaeda leader. At 1am local time, he noted on his Twitter page that a helicopter was hovering overhead, a "rare event" in sleepy Abbottabad. The noise from the aircraft was annoying, and he tweeted: "Go away helicopter before I take out my giant swatter :-/". But the commotion only got worse. Minutes later he wrote: "A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S" Then, when the sound of the helicopter stopped following an explosion, he tweeted "seems like my giant swatter worked !".... Shortly later he went offline for a few hours, returning in the morning to work out what had happened. He retweeted a post from Munzir Naqvi: "I think the helicopter crash in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the President Obama breaking news address are connected." Soon another Twitter user had confirmed the news. Mr Athar tweeted "RT @ ISuckBigTime: Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. ISI has confirmed it [[ Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood :-/"". Mr Athar describes himself as "an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops." But his peace and quiet was not to last. During the morning he acknowledged: "Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it."... Posted by: Mike 2011-05-02 |
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