Friday, June 17, 2011

U.S. officially drop all charges against Osama bin Laden

UK Daily Mail

A U.S. judge has dismissed all criminal charges against Osama bin Laden following the al Qaeda leader's death in a military raid in Pakistan.

U.S. District Court judge Lewis Kaplan, who had been presiding over the bin Laden case in Manhattan federal court, issued an order called 'nolle prosequi', which means 'do not prosecute' in Latin, a typical legal move once a defendant is deceased.

It closed the case after 13 years.

Bin Laden was indicted back in 1998 in the Southern District of New York for his role in the al Qaeda attack on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which killed more than 200 people, including a dozen Americans.

The indictment was later revised to charge bin Laden in the dual bombings of two American embassies in East Africa that killed 224 on August 7, 1998, and in the suicide attack on the USS Cole in 2000. None of the charges involved the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks...[Full Article]