The official United States version of Osama bin Laden’s killing is being questioned around the world, with doubters asking why they have not yet seen stills or video footage of the raid, his corpse or his burial at sea.
The White House said it was considering whether to release photos of Bin Laden after he was killed, but admitted the photos were “gruesome”. Press spokesperson Jay Carney said officials were concerned about the “sensitivity” of releasing any photos, but “there is not some roiling debate here about this”.
Asked if President Barack Obama is involved in the photo discussion, Carney said the president is involved in every aspect of the issue.
The Obama administration earlier insisted it used advanced DNA techniques to find a “virtually 100% match” of the body with DNA taken from relatives of Bin Laden. Face-mapping software was also used.
But doubts persist — especially online. “Is Bin Laden Really Dead Or Is This Some Conspiracy Bullsh*t The Government Is Feeding Us??? Something To Think About,” asked Hiphopwired.com.
“Talk about perfect timing! Right when the president’s approval rating is at an all-time low, and just as he prepares his re-election campaign, look who he discovers hiding under a rock? What a way to kick some life into his career?”
Participants in jihadi website forums also expressed doubts about the killing. “How sound is the news of the martyrdom of Sheikh Osama bin Laden?” asked a member of the Ansar forum. Another said: “God willing, [this] news is not true. Catastrophic if it is authentic.”
On Islamic Awakening one sympathiser wrote: “I will wait for the mujahideen to confirm this, and will not believe until I see a picture of his dead body.”
Zabiullah Mujaid, a Taliban spokesperson in Afghanistan, said in a statement to journalists: “This news is only coming from one side, from Obama’s office, and America has not shown any evidence or proof to support this claim.”.
American right-wingers were sceptical and scornful. On the Free Republic forum, a poster called salamander wrote: “The commie muzzie usurper in chief had better release photos and videos toot sweet. WTF with this burial at sea before the body is cold? — Something about this smells.”
In July 2003, the US faced criticism but succeeding in silencing most conspiracy theorists by releasing graphic photos of the corpses of Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay to prove that US forces had killed them. The bodies were embalmed for 11 days before being buried.
“We are looking at releasing additional information, details about the raid as well as any other types of material, possibly including photos,” White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said on ABC News’s Good Morning America show. “We want to understand exactly what the possible reaction might be to the release of this information.”
The DNA evidence that confirmed Bin Laden was dead came through in the morning after the assault at Abbottabad.
By that time, US intelligence officials were 95% certain they had their man. He was identified by those who took part in the raid and by a woman in the building said to be one of the fugitive’s wives.
Further identification came from photographs of the body that were beamed back to CIA specialists who compared them with confirmed images of the al-Qaeda leader.
The DNA test left little room for doubt, with one intelligence official telling reporters they had “a virtually 100% match” of the body against DNA taken from “several Bin Laden family members”.
As a prioritised task, the DNA analysis could be completed within six hours, said Mark Jobling, a geneticist at Leicester University where DNA fingerprinting was invented.
The first step was to extract DNA from a swab of blood or saliva, a procedure that can be done with a commercial kit in minutes. The next stage was to create a DNA profile to check against those compiled long ago from Bin Laden’s relatives.
A genetic profile is based on regions of DNA called short tandem repeats (STRs). These are parts of the genetic code where a sequence of “letters”, such as GATA, repeats several times over. The number of times an STR repeats varies from person to person, but is crucially inherited from parents, passed on to children and shared with siblings. A typical genetic fingerprint shows how many times 10 or more STRs repeat in an individual.
The match was obtained when the genetic profile of the dead man was compared with profiles already worked up for Bin Laden’s close relatives, such as his sister, who is reported to have died in a Boston hospital. A sibling of Bin Laden’s would share half his DNA, but a much stronger match was possible with profiles from more relatives.
guardian.co.uk