Osama bin Laden death: What to do with body poses dilemma for US
Officials will be wary of creating shrine or feeding conspiracy theories, while honouring Islamic burial traditions
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Paul Harris in New York
guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 May 2011 07.58 BST
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Osama bin Laden in an undated file photograph. Now that he is dead the Americans will have to prove they got their man while disposing of his remains without creating a shrine or feeding conspiracy theories that he is still alive. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Osama bin Laden is dead but the al-Qaida leader is still posing difficult questions for US intelligence and security officials: notably, what to do with his body?
The US authorities are doing DNA tests to ensure they have got the right man; and they have taken possession of his body to make sure no myths of "escape" build up.
An official said the DNA results would be known within a few days. In the meantime US authorities must deal with the thorny problem of what to do with his remains.
Senior US officials told news agencies that his body would be buried in accordance with Islamic tradition. But it is not clear yet what they mean. Islamic custom often involves the bathing, shrouding and burial of a body within 24 hours.
And where to send Bin Laden's remains? His large extended family in Saudi Arabia have largely distanced themselves from him. The Saudi government would be wary of having any grave on Saudi territory that could become a shrine for followers of radical Islam – there are many such people inside the kingdom.
Pakistani authorities would have similar concerns, sharpened by the embarrassment of having Bin Laden caught deep within their country and living in relative comfort an hour's drive from Islamabad.
There is some precedent in the case of Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was killed during a bombing in Iraq. Authorities in Jordan refused his family's wishes to have his remains repatriated to his homeland. His body was transferred to the Iraqi authorities who buried him according to Islamic customs but at a secret location, according to a US military press release issued at the time.
A similar unknown and murky fate may await Bin Laden's remains, but it may also feed conspiracy theories that he was never killed.
Uday and Qusay Hussein, the sons of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, were buried in a community graveyard after their deaths in a firefight with US troops and then later reinterred in a family plot. Something similar might be an option for Bin Laden.
US authorities did not immediately rush to bury the Hussein brothers, instead releasing the corpses 11 days after they were killed and relying on photographs of their bodies to convince people they were dead.