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| Osama bin Laden |
In the wake of a statement from Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso welcoming his death as a "major achievement" which ensured his crimes did not go unpunished, a spokeswoman insisted the EU's underlying values of justice were not called into question.
"Our values relating to justice in the EU are very important values for us."
She said the statement, issued jointly with EU Council president Herman Van Rompuy, hailed an "important defeat" for a terrorist movement responsible for many deaths across the world.
She added: "Bin Laden was responsible for many deaths and with his death one enemy has disappeared and we see that as a step towards making the world a safer place.
"This in no way questions the basic principles and values we have always supported ... this was not the execution of a death sentence, it was something completely different. We continue to be against the death penalty."
The joint Commission statement said: "Osama bin Laden was a criminal responsible for heinous terrorist attacks that cost the lives of thousands of innocent people. His death makes the world a safer place and shows that such crimes do not remain unpunished.
"This is a major achievement in our efforts to rid the world of terrorism.
"The European Union continues to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States, our international partners and our friends in the Muslim world in combating the scourge of global extremism and in building a world of peace, security and prosperity for all."
Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary general of Europe's human rights watchdog the Council of Europe, hailed the death as of huge significance.
He said: "The news of the death of Osama bin Laden is certainly an important step in the international efforts in fighting terrorism. It is of immense symbolic significance.
"However, as recent events have shown, the threat of terrorism remains acute today and the Council of Europe is dedicated to combating terrorism together with its member states."
European Parliament president Jerzy Buzek said: "We have woken up in a more secure world.
"Although the fight of the international community against terrorists is not over, an important step has been made in the fight against al-Qa’ida, to give security to millions of people: Christians, Muslims, all those who believe in peaceful coexistence."
Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the attacks of September 11 and the man who ever since has remained an elusive, shadowy presence at the centre of perhaps the world’s greatest manhunt, has been killed by special forces troops at a compound two hours outside of Islamabad.
The al-Qa’ida leader was killed on Sunday during an operation north of the Pakistani capital led by helicopter-borne US special forces.
Source: The Independent, May 2, 2011
The raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Islamabad, came about four years after U.S. intelligence officials identified a man who served as one of the al Qaeda leader's trusted couriers, according to senior Obama administration officials.
Bin Laden was shot in the head and chest during the operation, a senior administration official told CNN. White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said that despite intelligence indicating that he was in the compound, there was no certainty the al Qaeda leader was actually there when the president authorized the assault.
In announcing bin Laden's death Sunday night, Obama called it "the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat al Qaeda."
"A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties," he said. "After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."
Four others in the compound died in the raid, including bin Laden's adult son and a woman, Brennan said.
"Thinking about that from a visual perspective, here is bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million-dollar-plus compound; living in an area that is far removed from the front; hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield," Brennan told reporters. "I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years."
A senior administration official said later that the woman who died was not bin Laden's wife and may not have been used as a human shield, as originally reported. Nor did bin Laden have a gun, as earlier reports had indicated, the senior official said.
A DNA match confirmed with virtual certainty that bin Laden was killed in the operation, a senior administration official told CNN. Officials compared DNA of the person killed with bin Laden "family DNA," a senior administration official said, and a senior U.S. defense official said one of bin Laden's wives identified the body to U.S. forces.
There are also photographs of the body with a gunshot wound to the side of the head that shows an individual who is recognizable as bin Laden, a U.S. government official said. No decision has yet been made on whether to release the photographs and if so, when and how.
Calling the U.S. operation a surgical raid, officials said it was conducted by a small team and designed to minimize collateral damage.
A firefight was under way for most of the 40 minutes that U.S. Special Operations forces were in the compound, as the team encountered resistance from bin Laden and three other men, a senior defense official said.
The official said the forces had to fight their way through the first floor of the three-story building, where two adult males lived.
Bin Laden and his family lived on the second and third floors, and they were cleared last, with bin Laden killed in the last five or 10 minutes of the siege, the official said.
One of bin Laden's wives identified his body to U.S. forces after the team made visual identification, the official said.
In the end, all four of the combatants in the compound were dead, along with a woman whom one of the men used as a human shield, the officials said. Sources said bin Laden was shot in the head.
John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said it is his understanding that the woman who was killed was one of bin Laden's wives.
Later, a senior U.S. official said that bin Laden's wife was not the woman killed and that she may not have been used as a human shield after all. This official also said that bin Laden was shot twice, once in the chest and once in the head.
At some point, one of the assaulting helicopters crashed due to a mechanical failure, according to the officials. It was destroyed as the U.S. team flew away, they said.
Obama and the senior administration officials said no U.S. forces were harmed in the operation, which took place very early Monday morning Pakistani time.
Source: CNN, May 3, 2011
Storming bin Laden's compound
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| Bin Laden's compound |
It happened at some time between 0000 and 0130 local time on Monday morning (Sunday 1900-2030 GMT), dozens of local residents told a BBC reporter. Between two and four helicopters were seen flying low over the area, causing panic among some residents.
Residents describe hearing three explosions several minutes apart, followed by a huge explosion that shook their houses and knocked crockery from shelves. Most residents said they then also heard gunshots, but that the firing was brief, just a couple of minutes or so.
As the explosions started, they say, the lights in the area went off, going on and off again shortly afterwards. One report quotes some residents as saying they were commanded in Pashto - not the common language of the area - to turn their lights off, but this is unconfirmed.
It is believed that militants inside the house fired at the helicopters, but eventually they were able to land or hover outside the compound, and the commandos - a special team of some 15 or 25 US Navy Seals - emerged from them.
At some point in the operation one of the helicopters crashed, either from technical failure or having been hit by gunfire from the ground. But no US commandos were injured.
There are contradictory reports about which base the helicopters took off from, with some saying the US air bases at Jalalabad or Bagram in Afghanistan, but others suggesting it was the nearby Ghazi air base inside Pakistan.
Security concerns
The target of the operation was the compound, which had at its centre a large three-storey building with high walls, barbed wire and security cameras - and few windows.
The compound - valued at about $1m (£600,000) - had two security gates but no phone or internet lines running into the building.
Its occupants were so concerned about security that they were reported to burn their rubbish rather than leave it out for collection as other residents in the area did.
Mr Brennan told reporters that the commando team had been "able and prepared" to take Bin Laden alive "if he didn't present any threat".
"The concern was that Bin Laden would oppose any type of capture operation. Indeed, he did. It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight, and that's when the remains were removed," said Mr Brennan.
However other US officials who spoke to news agencies on condition of anonymity denied that Bin Laden had returned fire.
The al-Qaeda leader was in his bedroom when he was shot twice, officials said - once in the head and once in the chest.
Footage purporting to be of the bedroom appears to show a round gaping hole in the wall, suggesting US forces blasted their way into the building.
US officials described the operation as a "surgical raid" and said that as well as Bin Laden, three adult males - thought to comprise Bin Laden's trusted courier, his brother and Bin Laden's adult son - were killed.
A woman was also killed. She was originally reported to be one of Bin Laden's wives, though later reports suggested his wife was only wounded. There have also been conflicting reports as to whether the woman who died was being used as a human shield.
A senior intelligence official told reporters at a US Department of Defense briefing that Bin Laden's body was identified visually on the scene by operatives, by name by a woman at the scene believed to be one of his wives, by CIA specialists using photos and finally later on Monday by experts who found "virtually a 100% DNA match of the body against DNA of several Bin Laden family members".
The team left the compound carrying documents, hard drives and DVDs which it is hoped could yield further valuable intelligence data, officials said.
According to an official from Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the ISI, there were 17 or 18 people in the compound at the time of the attack, while US officials say those who survived the attack included a wife, a daughter, and eight to nine other children, not apparently Bin Laden's.
The ISI and US officials contradict each other as to whether a detainee was taken away alive.
Bin Laden's body was then flown to Afghanistan before eventually being buried at sea. US officials said this was to avoid his grave becoming a shrine.
Source: BBC, May 3, 2011
May 4, 2011 Updates
U.S. revises story on bin Laden's raid, offers more details
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| Bin Laden's residence sits in a region where most residents are Pakistani army personnel. |
The 40-minute raid early Monday in Pakistan left Osama bin Laden dead, along with four others in the complex that sits on a mountainous region near the capital.
Bin Laden was not armed during the raid, but he put up resistance when U.S. forces entered the compound, the White House said. Officials had earlier said that bin Laden was an active participant in the firefight, implying that he was armed and gave the U.S. Navy SEALs little choice but to shoot him down.
After the operation, U.S. forces departed with the al Qaeda leader's body, nearly 10 years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
U.S. military personnel arrived on two helicopters, attacked the residence and started moving methodically from room to room, said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
They were engaged in a firefight throughout the operation, he said.
There were no armed guards around the compound, according to a U.S. official who is not authorized to speak on the record.
CIA Director Leon Panetta told PBS "NewsHour" that the original plan was for two Black Hawk helicopters, carrying 25 people, to go into the compound.
The first was to go over a courtyard, while the second was to go over the roof. But the first helicopter had problems and had to set down on the ground, prompting the second one to do the same, he said.
"Both teams immediately went into the compound itself. They had to breach about three or four walls in order to get in there," he said. "They were able to do that and they immediately then went into the compound itself and fought their way up to the third floor."
Besides the bin Laden family, two other families lived in the compound, according to Carney.
On the first floor of the building, two al Qaeda couriers were killed in addition to a woman caught in the crossfire, he said.
Bin Laden and his family lived on the second and third floors, and they were cleared last, with bin Laden killed toward the end of the siege, Carney said.
Bin Laden was not armed but did put up resistance when U.S. forces entered the compound, he said.
According to the U.S. official, who is not authorized to speak on the record, bin Laden "didn't hold his hands up and surrender."
A woman in the room with him -- believed to be bin Laden's wife -- rushed U.S. forces and was shot in the leg, but not killed, said Carney.
Officials had earlier said that bin Laden was shielded during the shooting by women, including his wife.
Five of the approximately two dozen people in the compound were killed -- the two couriers, the woman, bin Laden and his son, said the U.S. official who sought anonymity.
Panetta told PBS he didn't think bin Laden said anything to U.S. forces before he was killed. Read more.
Source: CNN, May 4, 2011
White House changes story: Bin Laden unarmed
The administration possesses graphic images of bin Laden's corpse, at least one of which is likely to be released, according to CIA Director Leon Panetta. Officials hope that doing so would quiet any doubts that bin Laden is indeed dead. The worry is that anti-U.S. sentiment would be inflamed as a result.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin has also had the photos described to him and said it "does sound very gruesome."
Bin Laden was shot twice at close range, once in the chest and once in the head, right above his left eye and that bullet opened his skull, exposing his brain and it also blew out his eye. So these are not going to be pictures for the squeamish," Martin said.
How did bin Laden resist Navy SEALs without a weapon?
White House officials initially suggested bin Laden had been holding a gun and perhaps firing at U.S. forces. The corrected account raised questions about whether the Americans ever planned to take him alive, or simply were out to kill him.
After they shot him in the head and chest, the SEAL team in just minutes quickly swept bin Laden's compound for useful intelligence, making off with a cache of computer equipment and documents. The CIA was hurriedly setting up a task force to review the material from the highest level of al Qaeda's leadership.
The revised account of bin Laden's final moments was one of many official details that have changed since he was killed in the nighttime raid early Monday morning in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. The White House misidentified which of bin Laden's sons was killed — it was Khalid, not Hamza. Officials incorrectly said bin Laden's wife died in gunfire while serving as his human shield. That actually was the wife of a bin Laden aide, and she was just caught in crossfire, the White House said Tuesday.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney attributed those discrepancies to the fog of war, saying the information was coming in bit by bit and was still being reviewed. Nevertheless, the contradictory statements may raise suspicions about the White House's version of events, given that no independent account from another source is likely to emerge. The only non-U.S. witnesses to survive the raid are in Pakistani custody.
Source: CBSNews, May 4, 2011
May 5, 2011 Update
Account Tells of One-Sided Battle in Bin Laden Raid
The new details suggested that the raid, though chaotic and bloody, was extremely one-sided, with a force of more than 20 Navy Seal members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden.
Administration officials said that the only shots fired by those in the compound came at the beginning of the operation, when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding.
After the Seal members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired upon again.
This account differs from an official version of events issued by the Pentagon on Tuesday, and read by the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, which said the Seal members “were engaged in a firefight throughout the operation.”
In a television interview on PBS on Tuesday, Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., said, “There were some firefights that were going on as these guys were making their way up the staircase of that compound.”
Administration officials said the official account of events has changed over the course of the week because it has taken time to get thorough after-action reports from the Seal team. And, they added, because the Special Operations troops had been fired upon as soon as they touched down in the compound, they were under the assumption that everyone inside was armed.
“They were in a threatening and hostile environment the entire time,” one American official said.
When the commandos moved into the main house, they saw the courier’s brother, who they believed was preparing to fire a weapon. They shot and killed him. Then, as they made their way up the stairs of the house, officials said they killed Bin Laden’s son Khalid as he lunged toward the Seal team.
When the commandos reached the top floor, they entered a room and saw Osama bin Laden with an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol in arm’s reach. They shot and killed him, as well as wounding a woman with him.
The firefight over and Bin Laden dead, the team found a trove of information and had the time to remove much of it: about 100 thumb drives, DVDs and computer disks, along with 10 computer hard drives and 5 computers. There were also piles of paper documents in the house.
The White House declined to release any additional details about the operation, saying that further information would jeopardize the military’s ability to conduct clandestine operations in the future. The administration’s reticence came after it was forced on Tuesday to correct parts of its initial account of the raid, including assertions that Bin Laden had used his wife as a “human shield.”
Source: The New York Times, May 5, 2011
Michael Moore: Bin Laden Wasn't Killed, He Was Executed
Osama bin Laden wasn’t killed by a Navy SEAL team -- he was straight up executed, Michael Moore told TheWrap on Wednesday.
The “Fahrenheit 9/11” director has been setting Twitter aflame Wednesday afternoon urging the Obama administration to come clean about the circumstances surrounding the terrorist leader’s death -- particularly in light of the White House’s shifting account of last weekend’s firefight in Abbottabad (see map below).
The Oscar-winning director has been tweeting about his belief that Bin Laden should have received a trial, and his theory that Pakistan was keeping the Al Qaeda head under house arrest. TheWrap grilled Moore about his controversial views.
Is Obama lying about how Bin Laden died?
Common sense tells you he was executed. That was the plan all along. Just tell us that and quit treating us like children.
I have a lot of faith in Obama, but we’ve received three different stories in three days. We heard, "There was a firefight." "He used a woman as a shield." Now it turns out none of these things were true. He wasn’t armed.
Does it matter if he was executed? Do you think he deserved a trial?
I am a Catholic, and the position of the Catholic Church and the Pope is that we are 100 percent against the death penalty unless it is in self-defense. Look at the Nuremberg Trials. We didn’t just pop a bullet in the heads of the worst scum in history. We thought it was important to put them on trial and expose their evil. In a democracy we believe in a system of justice and we believe in a judicial system that gives people a day in court...and then we hung them.
It doesn’t mean we can’t hang them afterward.
Do you think people will be angry if it turns out the operation was less heroic than it originally seemed?
It was heroic. There was no need to embellish things. People in positions of power tread so gingerly around the electorate. Some people may not like it, but don’t bullsh*t us anymore about stuff like this.
The government, especially the Pentagon, has a poor track record of telling the truth, starting with Jessica Lynch. Pat Tillman, that was all made up, and this firefight is going to turn out to be hooey.
Also Read: Killing Bin Laden: Keeping Secrets in the Age of WikiLeaksWill it hurt Obama if the story turns out to have been partly false?
It won’t hurt him, because the basic facts will remain the same. Osama is still dead and everybody is happy about it.
In your tweets you say that Pakistan was safeguarding Bin Laden.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This was a garrison city. He was living in a compound attached to their version of West Point.
Source: TheWrap, Brent Lang, May 5, 2011
May 6, 2011 Update
Osama Bin Laden: Legality of Killing Questioned
The death of the man held responsible for mass atrocities, including the 11 September 2001 attacks, was welcomed around the world.
But as the US narrative of the raid has developed - and changed - since Monday's raid, there have been growing questions about whether it was legal to kill the al-Qaeda leader.
At one level, these questions have focused on what happened during the operation at the building in Abbottabad in which Bin Laden was found.
"The issue here is whether what was done was an act of legitimate self-defence," said Benjamin Ferencz, an international law specialist who served as a prosecutor during the Nuremburg trials and argued that it would have been better to capture Bin Laden and send him to court.
"Killing a captive who poses no immediate threat is a crime under military law as well as all other law," he told the BBC World Service.
'Killing appropriate'
Putting the case for the legality of the raid on Wednesday, US Attorney General Eric Holder said it was "conducted in a way that was consistent with our law, with our values".
"If he had surrendered, attempted to surrender, I think we should obviously have accepted that, but there was no indication that he wanted to do that and therefore his killing was appropriate," he told the Senate judiciary committee.
No blow-by-blow account of what happened in the moments before Bin Laden was shot has been agreed upon.
US officials have suggested that Bin Laden may have been reaching for a weapon, and that the Navy Seals may have suspected that people in the compound were wearing suicide belts.
But they have also said Bin Laden was not carrying a weapon - after initially saying he was.
And they have told US media that just one person in the compound shot at the special forces team, in what appears to have been a fairly one-sided confrontation.
Legal experts have therefore asked whether the US forces were instructed to kill, and whether Bin Laden was given a chance to surrender.
'Proportionate response?'
Like Mr Ferencz, British law professor Philippe Sands QC, of University College London says it is impossible to make a definitive legal judgement without knowing precisely what happened. But he says the case for the raid's legality has been weakened.
"The question to ask is: were the measures taken in the actual situation that pertained reasonable and proportionate given the circumstances in which the [Navy Seals] found themselves?" he told the BBC.
"The facts for Bin Laden don't appear to easily meet that standard."
On a broader level, US officials have justified Bin Laden's killing as an act committed as part of an armed conflict with al-Qaeda.
Mr Holder said Bin Laden's killing was "an act of national self-defence", calling the al-Qaeda leader "a lawful military target" who had acknowledged his role in the 9/11 attacks.
"It's lawful to target an enemy commander in the field," he said.
Some legal experts have backed up that position.
"I don't think that this is an extrajudicial killing," Philip Bobbitt, a specialist on constitutional law and international security, told the BBC's Today programme. "I think this is part of an armed conflict authorised by the United Nations, authorised by both houses of Congress."
'Setting precedents'
But the fact that Bin Laden was killed in a normally quiet town in a country that was not informed about the raid until after it had finished, has also raised questions.
"As a matter of international law, one country is not free to enter another country apparently without the authorisation of that country, and intervene, whether to kidnap or kill a national of a third state," Mr Sands said.
He acknowledged that under the doctrine of necessity, where there is an "overriding threat to national security", such an act might not give rise to responsibility or liability.
But he said the difficulty with that argument was that it was put forward against a background of a rise in extrajudicial killings, including through the use of drones, and that this was not a "lawful direction to be taking".
The logical conclusion of any idea that Bin Laden could be killed as an enemy combatant was "that anyone associated with al-Qaeda in any country in the world can be taken out, can be executed," Mr Sands said.
"I think it's deeply troubling if we are indeed moving to a place where you can have a global assassination policy for those who are perceived to cause trouble," he added.
The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, and the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin, have raised a similar concern.
"In certain exceptional cases, use of deadly force may be permissible as a measure of last resort... including in operations against terrorists," they said in statement.
"However, the norm should be that terrorists be dealt with as criminals, through legal processes of arrest, trial and judicially decided punishment," they added.
"Actions taken by states in combating terrorism, especially in high profile cases, set precedents for the way in which the right to life will be treated in future instances."
Source: BBC News, May 6, 2011
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