Osama should have been brought to trial instead of being killed: Rights lawyer

May 04, 2011 |

Melbourne/Sydney

Tags:

Osama Bin Laden

Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden should have been put on trial for his many crimes against humanity, rather being killed through a covert operation, a human rights lawyer here has said.

Geoffrey Robertson told ABC TV this morning that US President Barack Obama should not have said that bin Laden's death meant ‘justice’had been done.

“It's not justice. It's a perversion of the term. Justice means taking someone to court, finding them guilty upon evidence and sentencing them,' The Daily Telegraph quoted Robertson, as saying.

“This man has been subject to summary execution, and what is now appearing after a good deal of disinformation from the White House is it may well have been a cold-blooded assassination,” he added.

Robertson further said: “The way to demystify him, rather than to these soulful pictures of the tall man on the mountain, is to put him on trial, to see him as a hateful and hate-filled old man screaming from the dock or lying in the witness box. That way the true inhumanity of the man is exposed.”

"The last thing he wanted was to be put on trial, to be convicted and to end his life in a prison farm in upstate New York,” he said.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, however, has defended the celebrations across the West following the killing of Osama bin Laden, saying the al-Qaeda leader dedicated his life to violence.

"I think for us to welcome news that in a firefight he has been killed ... is the appropriate thing to do,'' Ms Gillard told reporters in Sydney.

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