Bin Laden’s burial pictures to remain classified: US court

A United States (US) federal appeals court ruled that photos of American military personnel burying al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden at sea, after his death in a special forces’ raid at Abbottabad in May 2011, will remain classified.
According to the Washington Post, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit sided with the government in finding that the release of postmortem images of the al Qaeda leader could cause “exceptionally grave harm” to Americans.
A conservative-leaning group, Judicial Watch, had been pressing the Defense Department and the CIA to release at least a subset of 59 photos of bin Laden after he was killed in a raid on his compound in Pakistan.
A three-panel judge wrote in a 14-page opinion that it was persuaded by testimony submitted by national security officials who had reviewed the photos and said that images displaying the bullet wound that killed bin Laden were “quite graphic” and “gruesome.”
Attorneys for Judicial Watch had argued that other seemingly innocuous images that depict a dignified burial at sea were unlikely to cause any damage to US national security. But the court said these were not just any photos but “an extraordinary set of images” of US military personnel burying the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
“It is undisputed that the government is withholding the images not to shield wrongdoing or avoid embarrassment, but rather to prevent the killing of Americans and violence against American interests,” according to the opinion from the judges. The court made specific reference to other instances in which national security officials said similar disclosures had incited anti-American violence.