Ni kweli Osama amekufa?

Makazi ya Osama Bin Laden

MAOFISA wa Marekani wana uhakika wa asilimia 99.9 kwamba wamemuua Osama Bin Laden.

Soma hapo chini

American officials said last night they were ‘99.9 per cent confident’ that DNA evidence proved Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Scientists compared forensic samples from the body in the Pakistan hideout with those taken from the brain of the terror mastermind’s late sister.

Photos of the corpse have also been passed to experts in facial recognition, who are comparing them to previous indisputable images of the Al Qaeda leader.

America has carried out such tests before on tissue samples from unrecognisable victims of drone bombing attacks on remote Afghan and Pakistani terror nests, who it was thought might have been Bin Laden.

The apparent speed of the Bin Laden tests raised yet more questions about the U.S. operation last night.
Merely transporting samples to laboratories where DNA profiling can be carried out usually takes time, as does the process itself.

However, new technology means that the process can be speeded up and it is entirely possible that the Americans kept a Bin Laden family DNA profile at one of their bases in Afghanistan.

Indeed, one report yesterday was that the DNA test had already been conducted on the fresh corpse.

Pentagon officials said that photos of the body and a videotape of the sea burial may be released soon to answer doubts that Bin Laden was actually killed.

In the huge manhunt for the terror leader, the CIA will have eagerly seized anything Bin Laden is believed to have touched, and searched anywhere he is believed to have stayed.

Dentists and doctors will have been questioned in the hope they have retained a tooth or other organic matter.

But previous information from the years following 2001 has suggested that America has been anxiously seeking genetic samples from Bin Laden’s numerous siblings and other relatives – an indication that the CIA did not have any such samples from the Al Qaeda chief himself.

Family affair: Osama Bina Laden (second from right) was identified from DNA taken from the brain of an unidentified sister, who died from cancer
And according to a report on America’s ABC news yesterday, a key sample had come courtesy of the death of one of his sisters in a Boston hospital several years ago, from brain cancer.

Immediately after her death, it was claimed, the FBI obtained a court order to seize her body. Her brain was then preserved, and tissue and blood samples from it helped form the DNA database that was used to match that of Bin Laden.

Such samples from siblings alone could not, however, prove 100 per cent that the new corpse is that of Bin Laden himself.

Close similarity of the new corpse’s DNA profile with those taken from siblings could only show that a member of the Bin Laden family had been killed.

Further circumstantial evidence – including photos, perhaps his height (up to 6ft 6in), and location in a hideout at the centre of the Al Qaeda terror network – might then be added to provide all the proof the Americans feel necessary.

A U.S. intelligence official said last night that as well as being identified by U.S. troops on the ground, a woman believed to be one of his wives had confirmed Bin Laden was the dead man.