PRESIDENT BARACK Obama has decided not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden's corpse, he told CBS News 60 Minutesin an interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
Confusion surrounding images of the slain al-Qaeda leader and a video that may or may not exist of his shrouded corpse being lowered into the sea has been typical of the disarray that has followed bin Laden’s killing.
CIA director Leon Panetta told NBC News: “I don’t think there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public.”
Press secretary Jay Carney then said the White House was mulling over whether to publish the photos. “There are sensitivities about the appropriateness,” he said. “It is fair to say it is a gruesome photograph.”
Some members of the administration argued photographs should be made public to cut short conspiracy theories that bin Laden’s death was a hoax. But others said sceptics would claim the images had been doctored.
Arab television station Al Arabiya quoted a Pakistani security source saying that a daughter of bin Laden saw her father arrested and taken away, and was summarily executed later. The account is not taken seriously in the US, but it typifies the public relations battle it faces abroad.
Bin Laden’s killing has also sparked a fierce debate over whether the Bush administration’s use of torture began the process that eventually led to the al-Qaeda leader’s killing. It also pits the CIA – both anonymous intelligence officers and at least one identified former agent – against the White House.
Other critics of the action, including former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt and prominent human rights activists, say bin Laden should have been accorded due process of law.
But US attorney general Eric Holder told the Senate judiciary committee yesterday the US killed bin Laden “as an act of national self-defence” and that “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”.
Stung by widespread US criticism and CIA director Panetta’s statement that they could not be trusted, Pakistani officials have given contradictory responses, at the same time condemning the US action and claiming to have been a part of it.
On Tuesday, the Pakistani foreign ministry castigated the US for violating the country’s sovereignty. But yesterday, Pakistani foreign secretary Salman Bashir told the BBC Mr Panetta was wrong. “I know for sure that we have extended every co-operation to the US including the CIA.”
Pakistani authorities alerted the US as far back as 2009 that bin Laden might be hiding in the compound, he claimed.
Native Americans have also taken exception to the raid that killed bin Laden. “Geronimo EKIA” – standing for “Geronimo, Enemy Killed in Action”, the commandos said, using the name of the 19th century Apache Indian leader who, like bin Laden, eluded capture for a decade.