It's hard to forget the evening then-President Barack Obama took to the airwaves and announced the death of Osama Bin Laden. While many see it as a bright day for American History, it's hard not to wonder what would have happened if bin Laden were captured alive.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00It's hard to forget the evening President Barack Obama took to the airwaves and announced
00:05the death of Osama bin Laden. While many see it as a bright day for American history, it's
00:09hard not to wonder what would have happened if bin Laden were captured alive.
00:13It's been over 13 years since President Obama strode up to a podium in the East Room of
00:17the White House on May 2, 2011, and announced that al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden
00:22was dead.
00:23The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda."
00:29Amid other efforts to take down bin Laden's terrorist network, SEAL Team 6 infiltrated
00:34his Abbottabad, Pakistan compound. He died in the ensuing firefight, and his body was
00:38dumped in the Northern Arabian Sea to avoid his burial site becoming a rallying point
00:42for his followers. It stands to reason that bin Laden would have stood trial if captured
00:46alive. However, he ran al-Qaeda in Sudan from 1991, then Afghanistan from 1996, instigated
00:53the 9-11 attack on U.S. soil in 2001, and by 2011, had been living in Pakistan for about
00:58five years. So there is a question of where bin Laden would have been tried, under whose
01:02laws and following what process. Well, those answers get complicated pretty quickly.
01:09We don't necessarily need to limit ourselves to imagining that bin Laden might have been
01:12captured rather than killed in the 2011 raid alone. Depending on intelligence regarding
01:17bin Laden's activities, he could have been captured at any point following the terrorist
01:21attacks of 9-11, all the way to the present, and under a variety of circumstances. In fact,
01:26bin Laden might have been captured even before 9-11 happened.
01:29The Washington Post reported that President Bill Clinton approved his capture in 1998
01:33because the CIA knew he was a potential threat. Clinton later amended those plans to include
01:38killing him. Out of five authorized military operations, at least one aimed to capture
01:42bin Laden alive, while one aimed to kill him, and three, quote, might have led to his death.
01:47But every plan fell through because those involved delayed taking action, which gave
01:51bin Laden time to change locations. The CIA head, George Tenet, in particular, didn't
01:55want an international debacle on the U.S.' hands if anything went south. He was particularly
02:00concerned if civilians got injured, money got wasted, U.S. actions resulted in regional
02:04political instability, or if the operation looked like a straight-up assassination. But
02:08if bin Laden had been captured before 9-11, history would indeed look very different.
02:14It stands to reason that bin Laden would have faced a trial if he'd been captured. However,
02:18it's hard to speculate what the proceedings would have looked like thanks to the vagueness
02:21of international laws related to combating terrorists, who straddle the line between
02:26military and civilian targets. As organizations like the International Center for Counterterrorism
02:31say, an international tribunal held in Pakistan, where bin Laden was captured, might have aligned
02:35best with principles of international law and justice. In fact, Pakistan might have
02:39been the only choice, because the International Criminal Court, or ICC, in The Hague, Netherlands
02:44didn't exist until 2002. This means that the World Trade Center attacks of 9-11 couldn't
02:50have fallen under the ICC's purview.
02:52But just because there wasn't really an ICC, it doesn't mean that there was no method for
02:56dealing with international criminals. There is historical precedent for the creation of
03:00independent tribunals to deal with complex international situations involving multiple
03:05countries where legal jurisdiction is unclear. After World War II, the world saw the creation
03:09of the International Military Tribunal for the famed Nuremberg Trials. It seems likely
03:13that bin Laden would have had a similar trial to those former Nazis in some way or another,
03:18unless it was kept secret in a place like Guantanamo Bay. But regardless, any trial
03:23would have resulted in worldwide chaos.
03:26If bin Laden had been captured and put on trial, we can be sure that the proceedings
03:29would have taken years, if not decades. After all, the self-proclaimed 9-11 mastermind Khalid
03:35Sheikh Mohammed was apprehended way back in 2003, before being held in Guantanamo,
03:39charged in 2008, and arraigned in 2011. His trial then took over a decade,
03:44only reaching a plea deal in 2024. Notably, all these proceedings happened away from the
03:49public eye, involved discussions with family members of 9-11 victims,
03:53and were complicated by evidence obtained under torture. What's more, as of August 2024,
03:58no sentence has been reached for Mohammed or any of his co-conspirators.
04:01The Pentagon has not released details of the deal publicly,
04:05but the trials of the 9-11 conspirators has been delayed for years.
04:09As a result, it's easy to imagine how much more complicated Osama bin Laden's trial would have
04:13been. On top of this, Americans likely would have needed a public-facing trial for cathartic
04:18purposes. But if the U.S. held a tribunal on American soil and not at far-flung Guantanamo,
04:23Pakistan, or anywhere else, it seems all but certain that some member of the public
04:27would have tried to assassinate bin Laden no matter how tight a security detail.
04:31Just look at JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby before
04:36his trial could begin. How many more people would be ranting about bin Laden's trial,
04:40even rioting, especially in the age of social media?
04:44Social media has become such a prominent part of modern life that we'd be remiss not to talk
04:48about how it might interact with the potential Osama bin Laden trial. It's not hard to imagine
04:52the same kind of quick-blurted rage that circulates everywhere online nowadays amid
04:56such long-awaited proceedings. However, it would be just as easy for social media and
05:00the internet to foster the spread of fringe beliefs and conspiracy theories as quickly as
05:05ideas like 9-11 being an inside job did after the attack on the World Trade Center.
05:09The BBC says that within hours of the attack, folks were scrambling to online forums to blab
05:14about how the whole thing was faked, staged, or premeditated by the U.S. government. Most
05:18assuredly, pro-bin Laden forces would be attempting to manipulate public opinions
05:22via the various social media platforms to help their cause. That's just the way the world works.
05:27Ultimately, it's safe to say that if bin Laden had stood trial, he would have faced execution,
05:32for better or worse. There simply is not a world where he would have been tried and left alive if
05:36found guilty, and he certainly would never have been found innocent and released. Even back in
05:411999, bin Laden was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list for numerous charges related to
05:46U.S. embassy bombings. By October 2001, he was on their Most Wanted Terrorists list.
05:51Following the 9-11 attacks, Kofor Black, former director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center,
05:56didn't hold back when expressing how he wanted it all to end for the militant leader. As he told
06:00BBC,
06:01"...I want bin Laden's head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice. I want to be able
06:05to show bin Laden's head to the president."
06:07In other words, no scenario exists where bin Laden would live if put on trial.
06:10The whole case might have come across as a prolonged pantomime meant to satiate
06:14the demands of the greater international community,
06:16not all of whom agree with the decision to kill the terrorist leader. In the meantime,
06:20we probably would have had an angry, divided U.S. public splitting hairs over conspiracies
06:25and fostering anti-American sentiment online.
06:27Operation Neptune Spear, the name of the SEAL-6 raid, was technically a CIA operation.
06:33As you well know, the CIA isn't really known for their famous arrests,
06:36so it seems the U.S. knew going in the easiest way out of this was to take bin Laden out.
06:41And it did exactly that.