So, assuming the reports of Bin Laden's death are premature, we still have to work out what to do with him if and when he's captured. Lawrence Wright - author of the Al Qaeda study, The Looming Tower - comes up with some novel ideas:
We should, instead, offer him to the authorities in Kenya, where, on Aug. 7, 1998, a Qaeda suicide bomber murdered 213 people in the attack on the American Embassy. More than 150 people were blinded by flying glass in the attack — most of them Africans who were in or near the embassy... Let Mr. bin Laden sit in a courtroom in Nairobi and explain to those blind Africans that he was aiming only at an icon of American power.
Then take him to Tanzania, where on the same August morning Al Qaeda hit another American Embassy, killing 11 people, most of them Muslims. The terrorists excused the murder of their co-religionists by saying that the bombing took place on a Friday, when good Muslims should have been in a mosque. That would be an excellent venue to pose the question of what Islam really stands for.
... By treating him as a criminal defendant instead of a enemy combatant, we could underline the differences between a civil society and the Taliban-like rule he seeks to impose on Muslim countries and eventually the entire world.
Mr. bin Laden could go on to many other venues to answer for his crimes — Istanbul, Casablanca, Madrid, London, Islamabad — but in my opinion there is an obvious last stop on his tour of justice: his homeland, Saudi Arabia, where hundreds of his countrymen and expatriate workers have died at the hands of Al Qaeda. There he would be tried in a Shariah court, the only law he would ever recognize.
If he were found guilty, he would be taken to a park in the middle of downtown Riyadh known as "Chop Chop Square." There, the executioner would greet him with his long, heavy sword at his side.
Interesting, but having seen Saddam's trial descend into farce, wouldn't it be the same story all over again?
