We’ve all heard a great deal about the information/evidence linking OBL to 9/11 and earlier attacks. This is what the UK Government released over the weekend in relation to that evidence – I was told there were several pages and some documents but this is all I found in a quick search.
I guess it forms the basis for the current attacks on Afghanistan-the Taliban-OBL. Make your own minds up.
http://www.pm.gov.uk/text/evidence.htm
BTW, I hope the Taliban have access to the web cos it’s the first chance they would have had to peruse the evidence.
Start:
This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Usama Bin Laden in a court of law. Intelligence often cannot be used evidentially, due both to the strict rules of admissibility and to the need to protect the safety of sources. But on the basis of all the information available HMG is confident of its conclusions as expressed in this document.
Thanks L_C, I’ll be circulating this at work tomorrow.
Pleasure!
This is a link to the BBC’s assessment of the evidence Blair has put in the public domain:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1581000/1581063.stm
At the end of the article their summary says:
<quote>
Strength of the evidence:
There is no direct evidence in the public domain linking Osama Bin Laden to the 11 September attacks.
At best the evidence is circumstantial.
Of this, perhaps the strongest leads are the alleged financial transfers between an al-Qaeda operative and the man alleged to have led the hijackers.
Other evidence - the intercepts, Mohammed Atta’s link to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the ties of other hijackers to al-Qaeda - is even less firm.
The evidence is not being judged in a court of law. It only needs to persuade governments around the world to back the US-led war on terrorism and to a lesser extent to carry public opinion.
US and British officials have indicated that they are unable to reveal all the evidence for security reasons.
When asserting that Bin Laden is behind the attacks, US and UK officials lean heavily on what they believe to be Bin Laden’s record and his connection to other terrorist attacks.
They are in effect arguing that the attacks are part of a clearly discernable pattern linked to previous attacks - notably the bombings of the USS Cole in Yemen and two US embassies in West Africa.
</quote>
Not quite nothing.
The document clearly states that it does not purport to be a prosecutable case in a court of law.
Despite George W.'s talk of OBL being “Wanted Dead Or Alive”, a more correct description is that OBL (and his associates) are “Wanted for questioning in connection with…”
If I were a cop investigating this case, I would consider that the evidence was good enough to warrant hauling this guy in for questioning.
Further evidence may come to light under interrogation. If not, then fine - let him go. If so, then we go to court.
This is how the justice system works. I think we’ve got enough to make a prima-facie case for questioning OBL and those around him.
And of course we don’t know what the intelligence agencies know that we don’t.