According to his Twitter stream @reallyvirtual, Sohaib Athar moved from Lahore, Pakistan to the resort town of Abbottabad to take a break from the rat race. It seems he didn’t move far enough. On Sunday, Athar found himself smack in the center of one of the year’s biggest news events. Scroll down to see his Twitter stream.
(Sohaib Athar’s Twitter profile photo)
A 33-year-old IT consultant, Athar was on Twitter when the sound of a helicopter flying overhead drove him to write a series of frustrated notes. Over the next few hours, he compiled rumors and observations about an event that would soon have the world riveted: Athar tweeted the secret operation that killed Osama bin Laden. “I am just a Tweeter, a guy awake at the time of the crash,” he wrote after the world noticed he had a front seat to history and inundated him with questions and messages. Here’s the story from Athar’s point of view:
- Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).
- A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S
- Go away helicopter - before I take out my giant swatter :-/
- @m0hcin http://bit.ly/ljB6p6 seems like my giant swatter worked !
- Since taliban (probably) don't have helicpoters, and since they're saying it was not "ours", so must be a complicated situation #abbottabad
- The abbottabad helicopter/UFO was shot down near the Bilal Town area, and there's report of a flash. People saying it could be a drone.
- @smedica people are saying it was not a technical fault and it was shot down. I heard it CIRCLE 3-4 times above, sounded purposeful.
- Two helicpoters, one down, could actually be the training accident scenario they're saying it was >>http://bit.ly/ioGE6O
- and now I feel I must apologize to the pilot about the swatter tweets :-/
- And now, a plane flying over Abbottabad...
- Interesting rumors in the otherwise uneventful Abbottabad air today
- I think the helicopter crash in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the President Obama breaking news address are connected.
- Report from a taxi driver: The army has cordoned off the crash area and is conducting door-to-door search in the surrounding
- RT @ISuckBigTime: Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.: ISI has confirmed it << Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood :-/
- Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.
- Interesting, I didn't think my name would trend on twtter before releasing a couple of rock albums and a few award-winning software....
