Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to first edition
- Select table of cases
- Select table of treaties
- Select Table of resolutions, reports and other sources
- Select list of abbreviations and acronyms
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Terrorism and responsibility
- Part II Responding to terrorism: legal framework and practice
- Part III Case Studies
- 8 Case study I: Guantánamo Bay detentions under international human rights and humanitarian law
- 9 Case study II: Osama bin Laden – ‘justice done’?
- 10 Case study III: extraordinary rendition
- 11 The role of the courts: human rights litigation in the ‘war on terror’*
- 12 Conclusion
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
9 - Case study II: Osama bin Laden – ‘justice done’?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to first edition
- Select table of cases
- Select table of treaties
- Select Table of resolutions, reports and other sources
- Select list of abbreviations and acronyms
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Terrorism and responsibility
- Part II Responding to terrorism: legal framework and practice
- Part III Case Studies
- 8 Case study I: Guantánamo Bay detentions under international human rights and humanitarian law
- 9 Case study II: Osama bin Laden – ‘justice done’?
- 10 Case study III: extraordinary rendition
- 11 The role of the courts: human rights litigation in the ‘war on terror’*
- 12 Conclusion
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Introductory overview of available facts
On May 1, 2011, twenty-five highly trained US Navy SEALs raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan where bin Laden, some of his family and his bodyguard had been hiding. The SEALs overwhelmed the compound, and shot bin Laden and another five individuals dead. Hours later, President Obama announced that ‘justice had been done’.
Analyses and opinion promptly followed. While many applauded – including notably UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon – dissenters lamented the decision to kill rather than capture and prosecute bin Laden as an ‘assassination’ or, in the words of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, ‘quite clearly a violation of international law’. Slower to emerge, as well as erratic and inconsistent, were details of the nature of the operation upon which, as explained below, legality in fact depends.
Different versions of the facts have ‘evolved’ over time. The earliest reports suggested that bin Laden was armed and ‘engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house’ and that he had used a woman as a human shield.7 Shortly thereafter, a spokesperson stated that they ‘expected a great deal of resistance and were met with a great deal of resistance’, describing a ‘highly volatile fight out’ in the compound. By other official accounts neither bin Laden nor anyone else in the room with him when he was killed was armed, while the Press Secretary noted somewhat obliquely that ‘resistance does not require a firearm’.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The ‘War on Terror' and the Framework of International Law , pp. 747 - 777Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015