London: Fresh doubts have emerged over the White House version of Osama Bin Laden's death after leaked emails suggested the Al Qaida leader's body may have been flown back to America.
According to the Obama administration, Bin Laden was buried at sea about 12 hours after his death, supposedly in keeping with Islamic tradition. But emails hacked from a well-connected US intelligence company suggest the terror boss was taken back to America to be examined and then cremated.
Various details of the raid in May last year were contradicted in the wake of the shooting, including the initial report that Bin Laden used his wife as a human shield, but this is the first time such an important factor has been called into question.
The emails were allegedly obtained by the hacker group Anonymous from the US intelligence analysis firm Stratfor, and were part of more than 2.7 million messages taken from the company's servers and posted on the Wikileaks website.
In one, Fred Burton, vice-president for intelligence at Stratfor, wrote to a colleague at 5.51am on the day Bin Laden was killed, saying: "Body bound for Dover, DE on CIA plane. Than [sic] onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda."
The Dover Air Force base in Delaware [DE] is the entry point for all US military casualties. In an earlier email, Burton said: "Reportedly, we took the body with us. Thank goodness." After the killing, some Muslim clerics said Bin Laden should have been given a full Islamic burial. Now conspiracy theorists are claiming that he may have been taken alive to America.
Official version
However, in his last communication at 3.10pm, the Stratfor executive appears to be more in tune with the White House version of events, writing: "Down and dirty done. He already sleeps with the fish." The emails were put online just days after Anonymous claimed they could provide "the smoking gun" for a number of crimes. In a statement, Stratfor called the hacking attack a "deplorable, unfortunate — and illegal — breach of privacy".
