A year after Pakistani Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan had venerated the dead Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by describing him as a 'shaheed', the country's Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has now said that it was a "slip of the tongue" and that PM Khan had "clarified it", reports Economic Times.
The matter resurfaced recently after Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi last week refrained from calling Laden a terrorist in an interview with Afghanistan's Tolo News.
When the interviewer quoted PM Khan as calling bin Laden a 'martyr', Qureshi said, "He was quoted out of context. And, a particular section of the media pair it up."
Last year, standing in the Pakistani Parliament, PM Khan had said that for Pakistani nationals across the globe, it was an embarrassing moment when the Americans came, killed, and martyred Laden at Abottabad.
PM Khan said, "The whole world started abusing us after that. Our ally came inside our country and killed someone without informing us." He had then also tried to assert, "I don't think there's a country which supported the war on terror and had to face embarrassment for it. Pakistan was also openly blamed for US' failure in Afghanistan."
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