The administration of American President Barack Obama has decided not to publish the picture it said it took of Osama bin Laden after shooting and killing him in front of his children and his wife on the pretext that it was an unpleasant photo that could provoke anger among Muslims in general and particularly among supporters of al-Qaida.
This excuse has been disproved, and it was very easy to disprove. If Osama bin Laden has really been killed as a martyr in the American attack operation according to the description of his supporters, then his martyrdom alone is a basic motive for anger and the seeking of revenge. If the photo is shown, whether it looks deformed or normal, it won’t change a thing about this fact and will only add very slightly to this anger and rage.
The American administration is lying, and it certainly has something to hide, something it wishes to keep from the public conscience, whether it is within the United States or outside it, and the Pakistani powers are complicit in this. Do you really think that foreign helicopters can arrive at a location just a few meters away from the most important military college in the country and just a few kilometers from an important munitions factory, attack one of the houses in the town of Abbottabad, kill a group of residents and take possession of their bodies in an operation that lasted no less than an hour without anyone opposing them?
The American story is confused and full of holes that the speakers attempt to patch up from time to time without fooling anyone. To begin with, they said the house in which Sheikh bin Laden, his son and a few of his companions were killed was luxurious and sumptuous, only for us to discover afterward and after the cameras and press went in, that it was an extremely normal house that property experts in the area valued at only $161,000. Inside, there were no air conditioning, freezers or televisions, and the kitchen appliances were completely normal. This isn’t surprising, given that his sons, who fled from Afghanistan or Sudan, confirmed that he lived in extreme austerity, forbade sweets and delicious food to be brought into the house and even [forbade] fan-assisted freezers, even though the temperature reached over 50 degrees in the summer.
The other lie can be summed up in the statement that the man had used his wife as a human shield and that he fired at the attackers only for us to discover by the Americans’ own admission that he was unarmed and that his Yemeni wife, Aml Al-Sadah, was hit in the thigh and was arrested along with the rest of his sons by the Pakistani authorities.
The steps taken by American President Barack Obama to give permission to kill an unarmed man reveal that he is not a president of a democratic country that respects human rights, committed to the rule of law and fair judgment; he is instead a man who leads a gang that practices murder, kidnapping and terrorism as a profession.
A state of law and correct judgment arrests criminals, terrorists and all those who disobey the law, and sends them to fair courts that issue judgments within their rights. This is what the Allied countries did during the trials of Nuremberg, and this was applied to the Nazis who ordered the murder of over 40 million people in World War II. Do you really think that Sheikh Osama bin Laden is a greater danger than them or that he was abused in this brutal way because he was an Arab and a Muslim?
Let’s return to this issue of the burial of the leader of al-Qaida at sea in accordance with the doctrines of Islamic law, according to the American spokesman. Who was the mufti who issued that fatwa? And who was the sheikh who led the prayer for the deceased? And on which of the books of Islamic law was this based?
All four schools of Islamic thought prohibit burying the deceased at sea except at times of extreme necessity, such as the inability to find land or if land was many days away and it was feared the body would decompose. What happened was that Sheikh bin Laden was moved from the mainland to the sea after his death. What about the bodies of his son and his three other companions? Were they buried in the same way?
What kind of attention to Islamic law are they talking about, having killed the man in cold blood after arresting him (according to what his wife and youngest son said), then throwing his body into the sea for the sharks that abound in the Arabian Sea?
This is not the behavior of a state that says it is democratic, leads the free world and nominates itself as a promoter of human rights as well as a promoter of these fabricated and disproved tales concerning the operation. The lies destroy all claims of transparency.
The killing of the leader of al-Qaida to avoid sending him to trial occurred for the same reason that the United States refused and continues to refuse to free Mr. Tariq Aziz, former vice deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister of Iraq, and fabricated accusations against him so that sentences would be issued that would keep him behind bars for life. It fears the courts’ discovery of secrets that would condemn the United States and its invasion of Afghanistan, and perhaps even its secret role in the events of 9/11.
In one of my appearances on British radio and television to talk about the killing of the leader of al-Qaida, there was an altercation between me and an American university lecturer, a specialist in terrorism. This was caused by his opposition to any photo of the bodies being published and complete acceptance of the American story because the American president does not lie. When I pointed out to him George W. Bush’s famous lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he flared up angrily.
In another program, one of the broadcasters said that Sheikh bin Laden was a terrorist who killed thousands of Western people and Muslims, and that he didn’t deserve a fair trial or a dignified burial. So I said to him, “Did the British government proceed to kill the Irish terrorists and throw their bodies in the sea as the United States has done? And what’s more, did the American administration kill the man who blew up the memorial building in Oklahoma or give him a fair trial?”
American lies lead to wars and occupations, but we are surprised by the Saudi government’s position. They didn’t admit to Sheikh Osama bin Laden being Saudi by revoking his citizenship. His children are still Saudi, and we were hoping that they might order the Saudi embassy in Islamabad to keep an eye on those children and to assure their welfare, including granting them passports to return to their country and to their people. Then we don’t know why this government refuses to accept Sheikh Osama’s body and to allow his family to bury him in the Islamic way so that he might preserve his dignity as a Muslim. The Saudi government did accept the body of Juhaiman al Utaibi, who was accused of terrorism and of storming the holy mosque in Mecca and killing tens of people, after which he was followed and executed. It is Osama bin Laden’s family’s right to recover the body of their son even if they disagreed with him and his terrorist operations, as they said in their statement in which they distanced themselves from his claim to a relationship with them.
There remains one final point, and it is related to the body of senior scholars and sheikhs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Islam and the call to it are not limited to issuing fatwas to support the ruler and justify his actions or issues of menstruation or childbirth. It also extends to the issue of killing others and throwing their bodies into the sea, and we thank the sheikh of Al Azhar mosque, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayyib, who didn’t hesitate for a moment in absolutely condemning this issue in his duty as a high level Islamic point of reference.
We shall remain with our doubts about the American story and our demand for clear evidence from a neutral source that confirms the killing of this man, his son and those with him. We know from the press that a reliable news item is one confirmed by at least two sources, and this hasn’t happened yet. We will also wait for a statement from al-Qaida or the Taliban movement in Pakistan or Afghanistan, which solves the many puzzles that surround this Hollywood-style American operation.
Al-Samidoon, Palestine
By Abd al-Bari Atwan
Translated By Thomas Coleman
5 May 2011
Edited by Amy Wong
Palestine – Al-Samidoon – Original Article (Arabic)