US Attorney General Eric Holder: “His killing was appropriate”
No release of Bin Laden photos
President Barack Obama has decided that photos of the dead Osama Bin Laden should not be released.
US officials had been discussing whether to publish pictures of Bin Laden’s body to counter conspiracy theories that he did not die.
But Mr Obama believed the images could inflame sensitivities, saying: “We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.”
The al-Qaeda leader was shot dead in a raid on Monday by US special forces in northern Pakistan.
The BBC’s Paul Adams in Washington says that President Obama has clearly decided that releasing the photos is not worth the risk.
Mr Obama revealed his decision during an interview with CBS television’s 60 Minutes programme, the network said in a statement.
Mardell’s America
“There is the suspicion that the US never wanted to take Bin Laden alive”
White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a briefing later that Mr Obama believed it was important to make sure that photographs were not “floating around as incitement or as a propaganda tool”.
Mr Carney said the administration had been monitoring world reaction and there was no doubt that al-Qaeda believed Bin Laden was dead.
He quoted Mr Obama as saying: “There will be some folks who will deny it but you will not see Bin Laden walking on this Earth again.”
Mr Obama’s decision contradicted a statement made a day earlier by CIA director Leon Panetta, who said the photos would be released at some stage.
The decision came as US officials began to comb through computer hard-drives, mobile phones and USB sticks found during the US Navy Seals raid in Abbottabad.
US Attorney General Eric Holder said Washington expected to add more names to its terrorism watch-list as a result of data seized from the compound.
Two telephone numbers and 500 euros ($745; £450) were also found stitched into Bin Laden’s clothing in case he needed to make a quick getaway.
Mr Holder said Bin Laden was a lawful military target, whose killing was “an act of national self-defence”.
Critics have raised concerns about the legality of the operation, after the US revised its account to acknowledge Bin Laden was unarmed when shot dead.
Two couriers and one woman also died in Monday’s assault, while one of Bin Laden’s wives was injured.
The 54-year-old Bin Laden – American’s most wanted man – was buried at sea from a US aircraft carrier, say US officials.
President Obama, who watched the raid from the White House on monitors, saw his approval rating jump 11 points to 57% in a New York Times/CBS News poll on Wednesday.
He plans to visit the World Trade Center site in New York on Thursday to remember victims of the 11 September attacks, of which Bin Laden was said to have been the mastermind.
The Pakistani military has confirmed that it is holding survivors of the US special forces operation.
They were being kept at secret locations in the cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, said Pakistan army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas.
Some of the survivors were being treated for bullet wounds that were serious but not life-threatening, he added.
The Abbottabad compound has become a sightseers’ attraction The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool says the compound where the raid unfolded has now become a sightseers’ attraction.
There is an ice-cream vendor outside and children selling what they claim is wreckage from a US helicopter, which the Americans said they blew up after it apparently malfunctioned during the operation.
The compound in which Bin Laden was killed is just a few hundred metres from the Pakistan Military Academy.
Our correspondent in Abbottabad says either the Pakistani authorities were incredibly incompetent or were harbouring the al-Qaeda leader.
Pakistan earlier rejected US suggestions that Islamabad could not have been trusted in advance with sensitive information about the raid to kill Bin Laden.
The head of the Pakistani foreign ministry, Salman Bashir, told the BBC he felt the American comments were “disquieting”, adding that the two countries had always co-operated well.
Mr Bashir said it was reasonable to accept the Americans’ violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty on this occasion, for such a high value target, although this exception could not become a rule.
In unusually frank remarks, Mr Panetta told Time magazine: “It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardise the mission. They might alert the targets.”
US lawmakers are calling for billions of dollars in aid for Pakistan to be reduced or stopped altogether.
Several governments in Europe also say Islamabad has questions to answer about what it knew.
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