So Osama Bin Laden is dead, but what about the blood of his children?

The story of Osama Bin Laden has finally come to an end, but I can't really say I feel any joy in the extra-judicial killing of an unarmed man. The US authorities have been careful to say that he was killed whilst "resisting arrest" in his home, but there's no doubt this was an entirely illegal military action, performed without the knowledge or consent of Pakistan. That makes it murder under anyone's law, be in national or international, and removing his body from the country compounds the crime.

There's been unseemly cheering in the US and grumbling elsewhere, but I have no doubt that killing him was the only viable option. And there was no way of getting Pakistani permission without tipping off Al Qaeda.

Could America have arrested him and put him on trial? It would have been a nightmarish legal process. Despite being the figurehead of an undoubtedly malignant organisation responsible for the US 2001 attacks, not to mention bombing and murder elsewhere, Al Qaeda is not and has never been the structured mafia-like organisation that the American media liked to portray. There's good evidence that Bin Laden paid for training, and sanctioned and approved of the 9/11 attacks, but what would he be indicted for under US law, given that he was a foreign national, illegally arrested and brought to the US without due process? Getting around this I've no doubt lawyers could be found who'd be happy to defend him, but would it be possible to find a jury capable of acting impartially? I think the only option would have been a special tribunal, with subsequent accusations of a kangaroo court, just as with the Guantanamo internees.

So, a process and a case could be constructed but it would be tricky, and the process would certainly take at least a year, probably more. And all the time the Arab media would be focussed on the minutiae of the trial, the tension causing riots in the Middle East, subsequent deaths, and the constant threat of terrorist attacks and intimidation in the US and Europe.

So, his killing was illegal, but it was the right thing to do.

The nagging loose end is what happened to everyone else in the compound, particular the women, and the children. Images of the villa show children's cots and the yard littered with toys, the ground still saturated with livid blood. I wonder if those American crowds laughing and chanting in New York would be so gleeful if they knew their jubilation had been bought with the blood of children.