"No one wanted detainees": Schmidle on the Bin Laden Operation
Nicholas Schmidle has a piece up at the New Yorker providing the most detailed account I've yet seen of the raid that killed bin Laden. It's a gripping read, obviously very well informed by JSOC sources. From a legal perspective, the point most likely to draw attention is the following passage:
A second SEAL stepped into the room and trained the infrared laser of his M4 on bin Laden’s chest.
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Nicholas Schmidle has a piece up at the New Yorker providing the most detailed account I've yet seen of the raid that killed bin Laden. It's a gripping read, obviously very well informed by JSOC sources. From a legal perspective, the point most likely to draw attention is the following passage:
A second SEAL stepped into the room and trained the infrared laser of his M4 on bin Laden’s chest. The Al Qaeda chief, who was wearing a tan shalwar kameez and a prayer cap on his head, froze; he was unarmed. “There was never any question of detaining or capturing him—it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,” the special-operations officer told me. (The Administration maintains that had bin Laden immediately surrendered he could have been taken alive.)
Robert (Bobby) Chesney is the Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, where he also holds the James A. Baker III Chair in the Rule of Law and World Affairs at UT. He is known internationally for his scholarship relating both to cybersecurity and national security. He is a co-founder of Lawfare, the nation’s leading online source for analysis of national security legal issues, and he co-hosts the popular show The National Security Law Podcast.
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