Here’s the guy who unwittingly live-tweeted the raid on Bin Laden

Yesterday Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual on Twitter) was just “an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains”, specifically Abbottabad, northern Pakistan.

The IT contractor and graduate of Preston University also says he’s a ‘startup specialist’ on his LinkedIn profile, but now owns a coffee shop.

But today he will become known as the guy who, while live-tweeting a series of helicopter flypasts and explosion, unwittingly covered the US forces helicopter raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound. And he knows it. Here’s a selection of his Tweets:

(To get them in order, read from the bottom).

[LINK TO TWEET]

[LINK TO TWEET]

Techcrunch event

Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025

Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.

Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025

Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.

San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025

[LINK TO TWEET]

[LINK TO TWEET]

[LINK TO TWEET]

[LINK TO TWEET]

[LINK TO TWEET]

[LINK TO TWEET]

[LINK TO TWEET]

[LINK TO TWEET]

[Update: Meanwhile somewhere in the vicinity @m0hcin was around too.]

UPDATE: A nice timeline of Sohaib Athar’s tweets are also here.

Topics

,
Loading the next article
Error loading the next article