Last night, when U.S. special forces raided a home that was being used by Osama Bin Laden, a Pakistani IT consultant named Sohaib Athar live-tweeted the event, even as he did not know exactly what was happening.
Athar, who uses the Twitter handle “@ReallyVirtual” reported hearing the helicopter, as well as explosions about nine hours before president Obama addressed the nation.
Suffice it to say, he has been inundated with interview requests, requests which he does not seem inclined to take at the moment. Shortly before noon ET he tweeted:
“I don’t own a TV set and stopped watching TV many years ago. Sorry three-lettered-big-tv-news-channels for not replying to your emails.
Athar is not completely ignoring the media, however. Al Jazeera English says that he will appear as a guest on its program “The Stream” at 4:30 PM ET.
Athar went on to joke about the attention he has received as the man who “unwittingly” tweeted the raid:
“I apologize for reporting the operation ‘unwittingly/unknowingly’ – had I known about it, I would have tweeted about it ‘wittingly’ I swear.”