Some cases even come to solutions that clearly violate IHL. They are nevertheless worthy of discussion, if only to raise a challenge to display more humanity in armed conflicts. Similarly, in some of the texts used in the case studies, the facts may not always be proven; nevertheless, they have been selected because they highlight interesting IHL issues and are thus published for didactic purposes.
It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. On September 11, ,[…] [w]e were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.
Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world.
Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. Osama bin Laden was a son of the Saudi elite whose radical violent campaign to recreate a seventh-century Muslim empire redefined the threat of terrorism for the 21st century.
He was killed on May 2, , by American military and C. President Obama announced the death in a televised address to the nation from Washington, where it was still late on the night of May 1. The United States had been trying to kill or capture Bin Laden since it launched an invasion of Afghanistan in November The next month, he escaped from American and Afghan troops at an Afghan mountain redoubt called Tora Bora, near the border with Pakistan.
For more than nine years afterward, he remained an elusive, shadowy figure frustratingly beyond the grasp of his pursuers and thought to be hiding somewhere in Pakistan's remote tribal areas and plotting new attacks. Behind the raid that killed Bin Laden lay years of intelligence work.
Ultimately he led them to a sprawling compound at the end of a long dirt road and surrounded by tall security fences in the wealthy hamlet 35 miles from Islamabad. On a moonless night eight months later, 79 American commandos in four helicopters descended on the compound. Shots rang out. A helicopter stalled and would not take off.
Pakistani authorities, kept in the dark by their allies in Washington, scrambled forces as the American commandos rushed to finish their mission and leave before a confrontation.
Of the five dead, one was a tall, bearded man with a bloodied face and a bullet in his head. A member of the Navy Seals snapped his picture with a camera and uploaded it to analysts who fed it into a facial recognition program. In its initial account, the American government said that Bin Laden had been armed while taking part in the fierce firefight that broke out after a team of Navy Seals launched its assault. That was later revised to say that Bin Laden had been unarmed. The commandos killed him and a woman with him.
They shot and killed him. They shot and killed him, as well as wounding a woman with him. Long before the Sept. He had united disparate militant groups, from Egypt to Chechnya, from Yemen to the Philippines, under the banner of Al Qaeda and his ideal of a borderless brotherhood of radical Islam. After the attacks, the name of Al Qaeda and the fame of Bin Laden spread like a 21st-century political plague.
Groups calling themselves Al Qaeda, or acting in the name of its cause, attacked American troops in Iraq, bombed tourist spots in Bali and blew up passenger trains in Spain. To the day of his death, the precise reach of his power remained unknown: how many members Al Qaeda could truly count on; how many countries its cells had penetrated; and whether, as Bin Laden boasted, he sought to arm Al Qaeda with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. His age also was unclear — either 53 or Long before Sept.
Tenet, director of central intelligence from July to July Bin Laden had never before claimed or accepted responsibility for terrorist attacks. In a videotape found in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar weeks after the attacks, he firmly took responsibility for — and reveled in — the horror of Sept.
After reviewing computer files and documents seized at the compound where he was killed, American intelligence analysts have concluded that the chief of Al Qaeda played a direct role for years in plotting terror attacks from his hide-out.
The documents taken at the Abbottabad compound, according to American officials, show that Bin Laden was in touch regularly with the terror network he created. With his whereabouts and activities a mystery in recent years, many intelligence analysts and terrorism experts had concluded that he had been relegated to an inspirational figure with little role in current and future Qaeda operations.
American officials believe that he spent many hours on the computer, relying on couriers to bring him thumb drives packed with information from the outside world. What followed was eight months of painstaking intelligence work, culminating in a helicopter assault in Abbottabad, Pakistan by American military and intelligence operatives that ended in the death of Bin Laden. How the Raid Unfolded In the days after the raid, officials gave some conflicting details of the operation.
Here is a sequence of events compiled from the most current accounts given by American officials. Pakistan time, high walls and high temperatures cause the first helicopter to descend faster than expected. Its tail hits a wall and snaps off, but no one is hurt.
Commandos kill the courier. His wife is caught in the cross-fire and killed. They shoot and kill him. A commando shoots Bin Laden in the left eye and chest, killing him. Mission Time The Seal team is on the ground for an estimated 38 minutes.
Bin Laden is killed about 20 minutes into the raid. He is buried at sea within 12 hours of his death. Others in the Compound Three women and nine children are taken away from the compound by the Pakistani military, who arrive after the raid. Items Seized The Seal team removes about thumb drives, DVDs, computer disks, 10 computer hard drives, five computers and piles of paper documents from the house.
Detainees at Guantanamo Bay provided the crucial breakthrough in hunting down Osama Bin Laden, American officials said last night. Senior officials in the Obama administration said intelligence gained from interrogations at the U. Hundreds of suspects rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan were subjected to techniques such as water-boarding, sleep deprivation, white noise and stress positions at the U.
Naval base in Cuba. Human rights groups claim the techniques amounted to torture, and that many of the detainees had no link to terrorism. But U. One courier in particular had our constant attention. Documents released by the Wikileaks organisation appear to confirm that detainees provided information about a courier operating out of the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, where Bin Laden was eventually tracked down — although it is unclear whether the individual involved is the one who eventually led U.
Mike Blakemore, of the human rights group Amnesty International, last night said torture could not be justified in any circumstances. Whatever is claimed, it is also hopelessly unreliable as a source of information — someone being tortured will say anything to try to make their suffering stop. Rather, it was a voluntary tip from Pakistani intelligence. It began with a walk-in. The couple had four children together, and bin Laden spent most of his childhood living with his step-siblings and attending Al Thagher Model School—at the time the most prestigious high school in Jedda.
His biological father would go on to marry two more times, until his death in a charter plane crash in September At the age of 14, bin Laden was recognized as an outstanding, if somewhat shy, student at Al Thagher.
As a result, he received a personal invitation to join a small Islamic study group with the promise of earning extra credit. Bin Laden, along with the sons of several prominent Jedda families, were told the group would memorize the entire Koran, a prestigious accomplishment, by the time they graduated from the institution. But the group soon lost its original focus, and during this time bin Laden received the beginnings of an education in some of the principles of violent jihad. The teacher who educated the children, influenced in part by a sect of Islam called The Brotherhood, began instructing his pupils in the importance of instituting a pure, Islamic law around the Arab world.
Using parables with often-violent endings, their teacher explained that the most loyal observers of Islam would institute the holy word — even if it meant supporting death and destruction. By the second year of their studies, bin Laden and his friends had openly adopted the attitude and styles of teen Islamic activists.
They preached the importance of instituting a pure Islamic law at Al Thagher; grew untrimmed beards; and wore shorter pants and wrinkled shirts in imitation of the Prophet's dress. Bin Laden was pushed to grow up rather quickly during his time at Al Thagher. At the age of 18 he married his first cousin, year-old Najwa Ghanem, who had been promised to him. Bin Laden graduated from Al Thager in , the same year his first child, a son named Abdullah, was born.
He then headed to King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, where some say he received a degree in public administration in Others claim he received a degree in civil engineering, in an effort to join the family business. But bin Laden would have little chance to use his degree. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in , bin Laden joined the Afghan resistance, believing it was his duty as a Muslim to fight the occupation.
After the Soviets withdrew from the country in , bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia as a hero, and the United States referred to him and his soldiers as "Freedom Fighters. Yet bin Laden was quickly disappointed with what he believed was a corrupt Saudi government, and his frustration with the U. Bin Laden spoke publicly against the Saudi government's reliance on American troops, believing their presence profaned sacred soil. After several attempts to silence bin Laden, the Saudis banished the former hero.
He lived in exile in Sudan beginning in By , bin Laden had formed a secret network known as al Qaeda Arabic for "the Base" , comprised of militant Muslims he had met while serving in Afghanistan. Soldiers were recruited for their ability to listen, their good manners, obedience, and their pledge to follow their superiors.
February - According to court documents, bin Laden orders the militarization of the East African cell of al Qaeda, a move that culminates in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, , eight years to the day after US troops landed in the Saudi kingdom.
May 29, - Bin Laden issues a statement entitled "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam," under the banner of the "International Islamic Front for Fighting the Jews and Crusaders," in which he states that "it is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God.
November - Is indicted by the United States on counts of murder for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. He claims he was trained in urban warfare and explosives at an Afghanistan camp run by bin Laden. May 29, - Four of bin Laden's alleged supporters are convicted of the bombings of the US embassies in Africa. December 25, - The Pakistan Observer publishes details of bin Laden's alleged funeral. On the front page, the newspaper reports that an unnamed Taliban leader said bin Laden "had a peaceful natural death in mid-December in the vicinity" of the Tora Bora mountains.
The report says that his death was the result of a "serious lung complication He was laid to rest honorably in his last abode" in a grave prepared according to the beliefs of the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect of Islam to which the Qaeda leader belonged, the report said.
December 27, - Afghan officials report that bin Laden is in Pakistan with al Qaeda sympathizers. January 18, - Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf says that Osama bin Laden might have died of kidney failure in Afghanistan after becoming separated from a dialysis machine he had used in recent years. March 9, - A Saudi-owned publication quotes one of bin Laden's wives as saying her personal belief is that he is living.
The woman, identified only as A. Osama's death cannot be hidden. Bush who promised his people to kill Osama, not knowing that lives are in the hands of God. June 12, - A Russian newspaper publishes what it claims is an interview with Mullah Mohammed Omar. Omar states bin Laden is alive in Afghanistan. The fire from this war will reach America, and it will burn the capital that launched an unjust attack on Muslims. March 10, - Muslim clerics in Spain issue what they call the world's first fatwa, or Islamic edict, against bin Laden.
They call him an apostate and urge others of their faith to denounce him. The ruling is issued by the Islamic Commission of Spain, the main body representing the country's Muslim community. December - The US government admits a "lack of intelligence" on bin Laden's whereabouts, noting he could be in Afghanistan or Pakistan. May 2, - In the early morning hours, a small group of US Forces, including Navy Seals, raid a walled and fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
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