White House, reacting to questions, says Osama picture inflammatory if made public

Tuesday, 03 May 2011

White House dubbed photo of Osama Bin Laden’s corpse as "gruesome" and won’t exactly make it public since it can spur protests against the US. (File Photo)

By DINA AL-SHIBEEB
Al Arabiya with Agencies

Discussions circulated on the proof of Osama Bin Laden’s corpse but the White House has replied to circumvent the debates by warning on Tuesday that Bin Laden’s photograph was “gruesome.” It said it was concerned the picture of the dead Al-Qaeda founder could be inflammatory if it was publicly released, Agence-France Presse reported.

Meanwhile, the White House said that Bin Laden’s wife was shot in the leg, but not killed. The White House appeared to reverse an earlier report that she died being used as a human shield in the shoot-out.

She has not been named, although news reports have said that she was spirited away by the US Navy SEALs who conducted the raid on the Bin Laden home in the cantonment town of Abbottabad, about 35 miles from Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad.

The White House also said that the Al-Qaeda leader was not armed when he was shot and killed by US commandos, but that many others in his Pakistani compound did have guns.

An embarrassed Pakistan said, meanwhile that it was not part of US operation to kill Bin Laden. The Al-Qaeda founder planned the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which Al-Qaeda militants used hijacked planes to strike at economic and military symbols of American might and killed nearly 3,000 people.

President Barack Obama of the United States, whose popularity has suffered from continuing economic woes in his country, will likely see a short-term bounce in his approval ratings, according to news agencies. At the same time, he may face more pressure from Americans to speed the planned withdrawal starting July 2011 of some US forces from Afghanistan.

However, Bin Laden’s death is unlikely to have any impact on the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, where US forces are facing record violence by a resurgent Taliban, news analysts say.

Many analysts see Bin Laden’s death as largely symbolic since he was no longer believed to have been issuing operational orders to the many autonomous Al-Qaeda affiliates.

(Dina Al-Shibeeb of Al Arabiya can be reached at: dina.ibrahim@mbc.net)