The Huffington Post reported in March 2012 that Osama Bin Laden was apparently buried in the waters of the north Arabian Sea, but internal emails from intelligence service Stratfor, obtained by hacker group Anonymous and posted by WikiLeaks suggest otherwise.
According to official accounts, he was wrapped in a sheet and "eased" off the decks of the U.S.S Carl Vinson just hours after he was killed on May 2 in a United States-led operation, in accordance with Muslim tradition.
But a leaked email from Stratfor vice president for intelligence Fred Burton, sent on May 2, 2011, at 5.26am states: "Reportedly, we took the body with us. Thank goodness." A subsequent email on the same day at 5.51am states: "Body bound for Dover, DE on CIA plane. Than onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda."
US forces said Bin Laden was killed in the siege at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011, just after 1am local time.
At 6.26am Burton wrote: "If body dumped at sea, which I doubt, the touch is very Adolph Eichman like. The Tribe did the same thing with the Nazi's ashes. We would want to photograph, DNA, fingerprint, etc. "His body is a crime scene and I don't see the FBI nor DOJ letting that happen."
The reference to Eichmann regards the cremation of the Nazi's body following his capture, trial and execution, in order to prevent any memorial or shrine being built.
Stratfor CEO George Friedman appears to agree, noting: "Eichmann was seen alive for many months on trial before being sentenced to death and executed. No comparison with suddenly burying him at sea without any chance to view him which I doubt happened."
John Hudson of The Atlantic Wire on March 6, 2012 that there are so many dubious aspects of the Stratfor story it's hard to know where to begin.
Anyway, the CIA and Pentagon are loath to officially comment on the story but a government official tells us, "There is no truth whatsoever to the allegations made in the article." Later in an update to the story a Pentagon spokesman, in an e-mail to The Atlantic Wire, was quoted as denying the accusation that bin Laden was cremated:
"Traditional procedures for Islamic burial were followed for Osama bin Laden. His body was washed and then placed in a white sheet. The body was placed in a weighted bag and a military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. After the words were complete, the body was placed on a prepared flat board, tipped up, whereupon the deceased body eased into the sea. Any allegations otherwise are simply false."
Conspiracy theories
According to Wikipedia, the death of Osama bin Laden gave rise to various conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and rumors. These include the ideas that bin Laden had been dead for years, or is still alive. Doubts about bin Laden's death were fueled by the U.S. military's supposed disposal of his body at sea, the decision to not release any photographic or DNA evidence of bin Laden's death to the public the contradicting accounts of the incident (with the official story on the raid appearing to change or directly contradict previous assertions), and the 25-minute blackout during the raid on bin Laden's compound during which a live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the U.S. special forces was cut off.
On May 1, 2011, an image purporting to show a dead bin Laden was broadcast on Pakistani television. Though the story was picked up by much of the British press, as well the Associated Press, it was swiftly removed from websites after it was exposed as a fake on Twitter. On May 4, the Obama administration announced it would not release any images of Bin Laden's dead body.
Retired General Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), stated in an interview with CNN that he believed bin Laden had died many years ago, and that the official death story given out by the American media was a hoax. Furthermore, he thinks the American government knew about bin Laden's death for years, "They must have known that he had died some years ago so they were waiting. They were keeping this story on the ice and they were looking for an appropriate moment and it couldn't be a better moment because President Obama had to fight off his first salvo in his next year's election as he runs for the presidential and for the White House and I think it is a very appropriate time to come out, bring this out of the closet."
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