Thaindian News

Washington, May 3 (ANI): By killing Osama bin-Laden, the Obama administration has a high profile trial and denied al-Qaeda a chance of getting a propaganda boost.

Although bin-Laden was officially wanted dead or alive, arresting him could have opened up a whole new set of legal and political dilemmas for Washington, giving rise to controversies about how to treat and try terror suspects, The Telegraph reports.

“I think the White House is probably breathing a sigh of relief that he was actually killed rather than captured,” Andrew Exum, a retired Army officer and fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said.

“There was a real danger if he had been captured, the trial would have been a circus, the incarceration would have been a circus. How we would have brought him to justice through the legal system would have been complicated,” he added.

He also said that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s trial might have served as a lesson for the Obama administration, adding: Saddam “became a martyr in the Arabic-speaking world.”

Besides, the chances of facing condemnation over political assassinations, which were considered an excess of the Cold War and outlawed in the 1970s, have also lessened following the 9/11 terror attacks.

“There’s not likely to be too much of an outcry over the decision to kill bin Laden rather than take him alive - for one thing, we’ve avoided what would surely have been a massively controversial trial,” commentator Joshua Keating wrote on Foreign Policy magazine’s website.

Bin-Laden was killed on Sunday night, and his body was buried at sea on Monday hours after Obama confirmed his death. (ANI)