Osama bin Laden's death prompted celebrations in the US but elsewhere the response has been more sceptical
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Sam Jones and Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 May 2011 19.49 BST
Article history
Osama bin Laden - the architect of 9/11 and for ten years the world's most wanted terrorist – is hailed as a martyr in some parts of the world. Photograph: Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images
Expert commentators Colonel Tim Collins, former Royal Irish Regiment commander and counterinsurgency expert, AC Grayling, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, Mona Siddiqui, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Glasgow, and Giles Fraser, Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral give their views on the killing of Osama bin Laden.
1 Do you have any concerns over how the operation was handled?
AG I have concerns over the fact that it seems Osama bin Laden was shot out of hand rather than arrested and put on trial. The US and its Nato allies are meant to stand for due process in law and proper legal procedures. For no doubt very justifiable, pragmatic reasons, it was just an assassination.
TC No. It's achieved its aims so it was a successful mission.
MS Difficult to know because the story keeps changing.
GF It looks more and more like an assassination. So yes, it concerns me. They didn't want to see the rule of law being followed and Bin Laden put on trial.
2 Was Bin Laden a legitimate target for execution?
AG He was certainly a legitimate target for arrest and trial and I have no doubt that the pragmatists everywhere will say that if he had been put on trial it would have been a focus for terrorism and martyrdom and arrests. From the practical point of view you can understand the motivation but it's very hard to excuse it.
TC You have the most dangerous man in the world and the expectation that he is unlikely to want to be taken alive. You've a duty of care towards the people you send. They should be in no doubt — and if in doubt — they should take him on, so I think they did the right thing.
MS He was definitely a legitimate target for capture.
GF I don't support the death penalty. I'm against it.
3 Was it legitimate to send US forces into Pakistan without telling its government?
AG Given the fact that the Pakistani authorities have been very ambiguous in the war against terror, it's pretty obvious that part of their army and certainly part of their intelligence services have been supporting the Taliban and al-Qaida. It makes it very difficult and if the Americans had told the Pakistanis that they were going to go in, they probably would have alerted Bin Laden and he might have got away. From a practical point of view you can understand what happened, but from the international law point of view, of course they should have consulted the Pakistani authorities.
TC I'm not sure that [no consultation] happened, despite what the Pakistani and US governments say.
MS I'm sure the US have carried out other operations in Pakistan before without telling the government and the Pakistan government will allow them because they receive such large US funding.
GF Let's put that under the umbrella of realpolitik.
4 If he was unarmed, as has been reported, was it wrong for him to have been killed?
AG Yes, absolutely. In the idea, if we are going to live by our principles, we should do the tough thing — the harder thing — which is to arrest and put on trial. You don't just shoot down an unarmed person — that's what terrorists do and you don't want to emulate them.
TC I don't think he was killed for the sake of killing, in the same way that [the IRA's] Danny McCann in Gibraltar was shot. With someone who has taken as many innocent lives as Bin Laden and McCann, why wouldn't they take your life when confronted? Caution must be the watchword and unless he had made absolutely clear he was unarmed and did not wish to resist, then the safe thing to do would be to neutralise a target like that and kill him.
MS For a lot of people revenge would mean death, no matter how. Bin Laden had become de-humanised; yet he had also become more than human – and the US wanted to get rid of that symbol.
GF If he posed some threat to the people who were trying to arrest him, then I could understand that. If he did not, then it was wrong to shoot him.
5 Is it acceptable that other people were killed and wounded in the operation?
AG Only if they were putting up armed resistance and it was a case of self-defence. But it looks like there were women and children involved as well. This is the use of force in response to completely unbridled atrocities by al-Qaida. It just shows you Thucydides's point, which he made over 2,000 years ago, about how our whole moral outlook and behaviour is corrupted if we fight fire with fire and respond in the way that they respond.
TC There was a 40-minute gunfight with somebody. I think they'll find they can never win. On one hand, they're coming forward with the facts as they find them out and there's criticism that they keep changing the story: well that's what happens in life. On the other hand, if they were to rock back and refuse to discuss anything whilst they fully investigate everything and then come along six months later and say, "Here's what happened", with a definite debrief from everyone, then people will say there's a cover-up, so they can't win.
MS It's not legitimate that the deaths of innocents should have been caused.
GF I don't know the full circumstances. [Maybe] if you are going to arrest someone and people fire back and you are in the middle of a war…
6 Should greater efforts have been made to take him alive?
AC Efforts should have been made to take him alive in order for a due process of law to be engaged in.
TC If the world's been looking for the geezer for nine years and 265 days and they find him, parting his hair to the left isn't an option. What you've got to be able to do is hope that you actually encounter him and be prepared when you encounter him — him being the most dangerous man in the world — to protect yourself. And I think that's the best you can hope for. Why didn't they wing him like they do in the Hollywood movies? Because that's fantasy.
MS We should have taken him alive and put him on trial. The desire to kill him is being seen as synonymous with the end of a problem. It's not; it's just another death.
GF It doesn't look like they made any effort to take him alive. They should have.
7 Would it have been preferable to capture him and put him on trial?
AG It would have been preferable to do that — not because it would have been easier and not because it would have saved other lives in future — but because in the ideal, if we were to live up to the principles of our civilisation (or the ones we claim, anyway) it would have been the right thing to do. But practicality makes very, very different demands.
TC I don't think that was a consideration. Had he been captured, I think we would have had a whole series of issues about jurisdiction and where he would have been tried and by whom. It would have been very complicated. Now that he's dead, it's much less complicated. But ultimately, there was intelligence which could have been gleaned from that. The fact of the matter is it's probably neater that he wasn't captured but the right thing probably would have been to capture him.
MS It would have been difficult to give him a fair trial. I'm not saying he wouldn't have been guilty. But two of the pillars on which the west stands are freedom and justice – this action diminishes that status.
GF He was a war criminal and should have been put on trial. People are dying in that part of the world to establish the rule of law and human rights. Going in and shooting him undermines the whole of that purpose. A lot of people are using 'justice' as a euphemism for 'revenge'. It's absolutely wrong.
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