POLITICO, June 17, 2911—A federal judge has approved a request by prosecutors to officially dismiss all criminal charges against Osama bin Laden. Such requests are procedural and routine in case where defendants named in indictment die.
The order was made public Friday, more than six weeks after bin Laden was killed by the U.S. military in a raid on his hideout in Pakistan.
A statement filed in New York on Friday offers a detailed explanation of how officials went about confirming that the man killed in the May CIA raid is bin Laden.
Using facial recognition technology and DNA collected from “multiple family members,” federal authorities say they have conclusively confirmed that Osama bin Laden was the man killed in the Abbottabad raid — with the possibility that the DNA sample came from anyone other than the Al Qaeda leader pegged at one in 11.8 quadrillion.
The tests confirmed that the sample collected at the house “matched the derived comprehensive DNA profile for bin Laden.”
The CIA also used facial recognition technology, comparing old photos of bin Laden to photos of his body. That analysis ended “with high confidence that the deceased individual was bin Laden.”
The al-Qaida leader was indicted in June 1998 in federal court in Manhattan on charges related to the terrorist attacks on the two U.S. embassies in Africa. It's the only federal indictment to charge him.
The papers were filed by prosecutors so that U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan could approve the dismissal of the federal charges against the deceased Al Qaeda leader, as is standard practice for people under indictment who die. Bin Laden was indicted on charges related to a 1993 ambush in Somalia that killed 18 U.S. soldiers, as well as for a role in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in 1998 and 2000 attack on the USS Cole. The charges included conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens, conspiracy to destroy U.S. property and use of a weapon of mass destruction.
He had not been charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
After the May 2 raid on bin Laden’s compound, U.S. forces gathered DNA from his body and took it to a base in Afghanistan, where CIA officers compared it “with a comprehensive DNA profile derived from multiple members of bin Laden’s family,” said the statement which was signed by deputy assistant attorney general George Toscas.
The document also mentions that a “significant” amount of terrorist material was found at the Abbottabad compound, including “correspondence between Osama bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda leaders that concerns a wide range of Al Qaeda issues.”
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Saturday, June 18th 2011 at 10:36AM
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