US drops charges against bin Laden

A Pakistani army soldier checks a cyclist
© AFP/File Asif Hassan

NEW YORK (AFP) – Federal prosecutors dropped charges against Osama bin Laden from attacks spanning more than a decade, officials said in court papers filed in US District Court in New York Friday.

Charges included more than 200 counts of criminal activity such as murder, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against civilians and more.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan approved the request, which is a common procedure when the defendant dies.

The decision applies to charges originally filed in June 1998, which were brought against bin Laden for supporting the ambush that killed 18 US soldiers during an attack in Somalia in 1993.

Those charges were later revised to include the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and other terrorist activities.

The court papers filed on Friday included a statement from a Justice Department official declaring detailed evidence that bin Laden was killed by US forces in a raid on May 1 in Pakistan.

The statement said DNA samples, facial recognition analysis and the confirmation of one of bin Laden’s wives all confirmed the identity of the al-Qaeda leader.

“These tests confirmed that the sample from the Abbottabad raid genetically matched the derived comprehensive DNA profile” for bind Laden, the official wrote in the statement. “The possibility of a mistaken identification is approximately one in 11.8 quadrillion.”

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