President Barack Obama said U.S. forces were “respectful of the body” of Osama bin Laden when they buried his remains at sea, despite criticism from some Muslim clerics that it violated Islamic practice. “We took more care on this than, obviously, bin Laden took when he killed 3,000 people. He didn’t have much regard for how they were treated and desecrated,” Obama told CBS’s “60 Minutes” program, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the al Qaeda leader masterminded. “But that, again, is something that makes us different.
And I think we handled it appropriately,” Obama said, according to an advance excerpt of an interview that will air in full on Sunday. Questions have multiplied since the White House said bin Laden was unarmed when U.S. helicopter-borne commandos shot and killed him on Monday at the fortified villa where he had been hiding in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
Obama defends bin Laden sea burial as ‘respectful’
