Osama bin Laden – Invisible Hand or Scapegoat.
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States was commissioned late in 2002. It was a cause célèbre that suggested Osama bin Laden was ‘the person ultimately responsible’ for the 11 September attack on Manhattan. Subsequent to the Commission’s conclusions Rex Tomb the Chief Investigative Publicist, for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) said: “The FBI has no hard evidence connecting Osama bin Laden to nine-eleven” (‘Muckraker Report,’ 5 June 2006). Bin Laden may well have been the distal invisible force (or architect), or perhaps financial supporter, responsible for those attacks on New York. But those who were supposedly responsible: Saudi Arabia’s Abdulaziz al-Omari, Waleed M. al-Shehri, Wail al-Shehri, Satam al-Suqami, and Egypt’s Muhammad ‘Ata as-Sayyid. Are liken to international neo-terrorist groups, or cells. Although not necessarily organically affiliated, do appear, by virtue of their alleged actions, to have been influenced by bin Laden’s rhetoric. Some terrorists don’t operate autonomously but receive funding (or support) from outside their particular territory. Whether or not this was a verifiable circumstance of Abdulaziz al-Omari et al., in the Manhattan attack appears, at the time of writing, to be suppositional. In so far as, all suspects are allowed access to natural justice. Namely, access to the rules and procedures at law, by way of, submissions of evidence by both prosecution, and the defense. Followed by an unbiased process of conviction and sentence even in the light of incontrovertible incriminating evidence. This democratic principle, of natural justice, was embedded in the Great Charter granted by King John between 1215 and 1225:
Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus aut differemus, rectum aut justitiam.
To no man will we sell, or deny, or delay, right or justice.
Magna Carta, cl. x.
If a society fails to observe the rules and procedures of law, its very fabric will disintegrate. Into Lawlessness liken to those lawless, crimes against the people in Oklahoma, New York; et al. Whether or not, evidential support could validate an organic connection between Osama bin Laden (or Al-qā‛idah), with the attacks on New York; would at present be inconclusive at law.
Osama bin Laden and the International Criminal Court(I.C.C.)
Theoretically, it would have been difficult to have brought charges, against Osama bin Laden, prior to the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) adopting the Resolution in September 2001. The statute laws and their formulated practical applications, prior to September 2001, were drafted solely for matters concerning interstate altercations. The laws as they stood then did not include “Terrorist activities” among the categories, nor statutory laws to serve a formal charge on an individual. Bin Laden it would seem, fell into the latter category, in that, he was born on 10 March 1957 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was a national there until the Saudi government rescinded his citizenship in 1994, in which status as an individual, he would have been unrepresentative of any nation state; at the date of his alleged crime. From that place, I would deduce that his alleged crime, in an I.C.C. jurisdiction would have most likely been ruled ultra vires.
This apparent judicial anomaly, however, has since been remedied. Seventeen days following the 11 September attack, the United Nations Security Council (U.N.S.C.) passed Resolution number 1373 (28 September), for all member states to ‘apprehend and bring terrorists to law’. However, whether or not evidential support could establish a verifiable organic connection between bin Laden, and his alleged crime (‘terrorist attack’) against the New York community is not yet certain. Furthermore, if this particular piece of legislation (vs.) were retroactive, there would be problems in indicting, and succeeding in a conviction, at an I.C.C. jurisdiction. Moreover, there are possibilities of the emergence of defence evidence that might establish embarrassing financial affiliations between the bin Laden and Bush families. Foremost, is finding his whereabouts to apprehend him, without, of course, his trial might proceed in absentia if such a procedural statute were included in the Resolution.