A United States federal appeals court sided with the government in the case of Juidicial Watch Inc v. U.S. Department of Defense and CIA, and ruled on Tuesday that the government is under no obligation to release the photos that were taken of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden when he was killed by Navy SEAL commandos two-years ago, according to Yahoo News.
The photos show bin Laden right after he died at his Pakistani compound, and the transportation and placement of his body on a U.S. vessel for his burial at sea, according to Yahoo! News.
The photos help the CIA and other federal officials conduct facial recognition reviews to confirm the identity of the deceased, as claimed by official court documents.
The conservative watchdog group filed the lawsuit on Jan. 10 under the Freedom of Information Act of 1966, which guarantees common access to some government documentation, after the CIA refused to divulge the post-mortem images of bin Laden. Judicial Watch President, Tom Fitton, said that not releasing the photos would put power back in the hands of terrorists, thereby allowing them to dictate the statutes by which we live.
They also complained that the images were not classified properly.
The court deemed the federal government did nothing wrong when they refused to share the snapshots, and that the court could not determine whether the classification method was correct or incorrect.
"The CIA's declarations give reason to believe that releasing images of American military personnel burying the founder and leader of al Qaeda could cause exceptionally grave harm," the court wrote in its decision.
"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," President Barack Obama wrote in an unofficial opinion letter to the appeal court.
© 2025 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
