4 May 2011 “Took him to the graveyard, didn’t bring him back.”
“Concerns raised over shooting of unarmed bin Laden, burial”
Cassi Creek:
The article quotes several former government officials, attorneys, and others who find fault with the execution of bin Laden when, they believe, he might have been captured, extradited, and tried in a court of law.
The decision to shoot or not rightfully belonged to the men on the ground inside the compound. I think they chose correctly. In the immediacy of combat they had no time to treat him as a criminal suspect and worry about his rights. He’d already claimed credit for the 9-11 attacks. If he lied about that, it became his problem. I believe, and more importantly, those who have access to actual intelligence believe, that he is guilty of the murders of thousands of people worldwide. The extraction team was deployed with a “dead or alive” mission objective.
The matter of burial is also going to become a point of dispute.
“BURIAL AT SEA CONCERN”
“Son Had, spokesman for Jema'ah Ansharut Tauhid, the Islamic group founded by Indonesian firebrand Abu Bakar Bashir, said it was clear that bin Laden had become a martyr.
"In Islam, a man who died....in fighting for sharia will earn the highest title for mankind other than a prophet, that is a martyr. Osama is a fighter for Islam, for sharia."
But for many Muslim leaders the greater concern was bin Laden's burial at sea, not land. His body was taken to an aircraft carrier where U.S. officials said it was buried at sea, according to Islamic rites.
I.A. Rehman, an official with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said it was more important than the issue of how bin Laden was killed.
"The fact that he was not armed is a smaller thing...There will be more focus on whether he was buried in an Islamic way. There has been reaction from Islamic clerics that he was not properly buried and this will be discussed for some time."
Saudi Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, an adviser to the Saudi Royal Court, was more direct.
"That is not the Islamic way. The Islamic way is to bury the person in land (if he has died on land) like all other people."
Amidhan, a member of Indonesia's Ulema Council (MUI), the highest Islamic authority in the world's biggest Muslim society, said he was more concerned about the burial that the killing.
"Burying someone in the ocean needs extraordinary situation. Is there one?," he told Reuters.
"If the U.S. can't explain that, then it appears just like dumping an animal and that means there is no respect for the man ... and what they did can incite more resentment among Osama's supporters."
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington, Michael Perry in Sydney, Alistair Scrutton in New Delhi, Rebecca Conway in Islamabad, Olivia Rondonwu in Jakarta, Aaron Gray-Block in Amsterdam; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)”
Cassi Creek:
The United States is not legally or ethically responsible, to those who wage war against it and its citizens, to provide burial or other means of body disposal upon their demise. The process of assuring that the deceased’s religious concerns are observed resides in the deceased or the legal next of kin. The United States is under no obligation to satisfy the precepts of any religion or to transport and release the body of executed criminals to their next of kin.
If there are Muslim clerics unhappy with the manner in which bin Laden’s body was disposed of, that is not a concern of the United States or its citizens. In point of fact, the United States placed members of its armed forces at grave risk to assure that the body of bin Laden was removed from its place of death so that it could be prepared for burial in Islamic manner.
If these same clerics wish to voice concern, they are free to do so. However, should such matters be used to stir up anti-American sentiment, the United States may wish to present the responsible parties with the bill for services rendered; to include:
Body retrieval, hourly use of four helicopters and the replacement price of one Blackhawk helicopter.
Hourly wages of U.S, Navy personnel engaged in extraction, body retrieval, body preparation for and translation expenses at burial
Shroud and weighted body bag
Hourly operational costs of U.S.S. Carl Vinson CVN 70
while engaged in body recovery, transport, and burial.
The United States went out of its way to handle the body of bin Laden with appropriate respect. In fact, it was treated with respect that the deceased did not merit. Ask the families of any of his victims, worldwide. They would, no doubt, have been far less considerate of religious concerns.
There is no way to please everyone!
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