Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 30

C4 Tuesday, May 3, 2011 NEWS EXTRA Breaking news at calgaryherald.com DEATH OF BIN LADEN Burial at sea angers Muslim scholars sMy I A x- r.V ll Ai v- Jij4' Sfc Faisal Mahmood, Reuters Men stand over debris as it is moved out by military vehicles on Monday from the compound in Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden was killed. World's most wanted man died in quiet, own eace i. 1 4 Xr AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE CAIRO Top Muslim scholars said Islam is opposed to burials at sea like the one Osama bin Laden received on Monday after being shot dead in a U.S. operation in Pakistan. The United States says bin Laden received Muslim religious rites, but his body was "eased" into the Arabian Sea so that no one can build a shrine on his grave.

"If it is true that the body was thrown into the sea, then Islam is totally against that," said Mahmud Azab, an adviser to Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the top Sunni Muslim authority. A senior U.S. defence official said that U.S. forces administered Muslim religious rites for bin Laden aboard an aircraft carrier on Monday in the Arabian Sea, after he was shot dead in a raid on his Pakistan villa. 'Today religious rights were conducted for the deceased on the deck of the USS Carl-Vinson, which is located in the North Arabian Sea," the official said.

"Traditional procedures for Islamic burial were followed. The deceased's body was washed and then placed in a white sheet The body was placed in a weighted bag. "A military officer read prepared religious remarks which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. After the words were complete, the body was placed on a prepared flat-board (and) eased into the sea." The ceremony took about 50 minutes aboard the aircraft carrier which is Every person deserves the right to be buried Muzammil siddiqi stationed off the coast of Pakistan to help U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

But Azab insisted that the dead should be given full respect regardless of how they died or their beliefs, an opinion shared also by several other Muslim scholars. "Any corpse, if it belongs to someone murdered or someone who died of natural causes, must be respected," said Azab, who advises Al-Azhar's chief for inter-religious affairs at the Cairo-based prestigious institution. "The bodies of believers and non-believers, Muslim or Christian, must be respected," he said, adding that Tayeb was due to issue a formal statement. "Islam only accepts burials" at sea if it is inevitable, like for those who drown, he said. US.

officials said bin Laden was buried at sea after being shot dead in a U.S. helicopter-borne raid on his fortified villa in Pakistan to avoid a "shrine" situation. "We wanted to avoid a situation where it would become a shrine," one official told AFP, adding that there was no time for negotiations with other countries to arrange for a possible burial. Muzammil Siddiqi, chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, an association that interprets Islamic law, said putting a body into the sea "is not a normal solution." "Normally if a person dies at sea, travelling at sea, then they can put him in sea, throw the body in the water. But if somebody dies on the land then normally they do not throw the body in the sea," Siddiqi said.

"I was hearing on the news that this was done so that no one can build a shrine on his grave, that might have been a consideration (but) every person deserves the right to be buried. "I don't know why they did it," he said of the watery grave. A source close to the head of the Grand Mosque in Paris said a burial at sea "is totally against the sacrosanct rules of Islam." ABC News, Reuters This video image obtained from ABC News on Monday shows a blood-stained bedroom in the mansion where Osama bin Laden was killed. Islamabad along the Kula Kula highway, which links Pakistan to China. The town was peaceful The whole world may be alive with excitement as it digests the news that the biggest manhunt in history has reached its gory conclusion, but the most important death of the 21st century so far seems to have made little impact in Abbottabad.

The shops were open, selling fruit, groceries and kebabs. The restaurants were full as local people sat in the open air smoking cigarettes and munching naan bread. There was no tension in the air, no menacing groups of young men at street corners, no religious slogans scrawled on the walls or shouted in the streets. Osama bin Laden met his death in the cleanest town I have ever seen in Pakistan. I marvelled at the tidy gardens, whitewashed walls and tidily pruned hedgerows.

There was no litter in the streets. The shiny signposts at every corner betrayed the character of this idyllic city. Abbottabad is a military cantonment The military is omnipresent. As we entered the road leading to Bilal town where the Americans say bin Laden was killed we were greeted by a large tank painted with extravagant military markings. It marked the entrance to the Pakistan military academy.

A few hundred metres down to the bottom of the hill was the entrance to Bilal town Murderer's family 'good people' say neighbours PETER OBORNE The telegraph ABBOTTABAD, PAKISTAN Osama bin Laden was certain to be caught in the end, but he was expected to go down in a blaze of glory in the mountains of Afghanistan or a remote hideout in Pakistan's tribal areas. Instead, the world's most wanted man met his end in a short firefight in Pakistan's answer to Aldershot, the British army-base town. In the few hours I spent there and as I walked the short distance from his compound to the grounds of Pakistan's army officer training academy it seemed quite inconceivable that he could have lived there without the authorities being aware of his presence. As a garrison town under constant threat of suicide bomb attack, it was obvious that nothing can move without the army and intelligence services knowing about it. It was early evening by the time we arrived in Abbottabad after a winding 56 kilometre journey north from Pakistan where the bin Laden family lived.

"The neighbours said that they were backward" a phrase often used by urban people in Pakistan to refer to visitors from the mountains. He added that people walking past the bin Laden compound often heard the sounds of women talking and children crying. On the street outside, we met a plumber, Mohammad Naseen Khan, who said he was working in the house next to where Osama bin Laden had lived. Neighbours had told him that "they were good people. They were generous in paying their bills.

They always gave a little extra." Not one person we spoke to believed bin Laden had been killed in the shootout. Wajjid Robbabni told us that the Americans were faking the death because they wanted to justify withdrawal from Afghanistan. There was a mood of rea soned anger among the people outside Bilal town. They expressed indignation that the Americans had carried out a military operation on Paki stani soil. Most of the men we spoke to told us that they strongly admired Osama bin Laden, There were vigorous nods of approval as Mohamamad Iqbal, an elderly lawyer, said: "Bin Laden will be re membered.

If he is dead, it will make no difference. His mission is over, but his name will live on." with U.S. United States and Pakistan have moved closer together in their views about the need for a political rather than military solution Afghanistan. Official sources from three different countries have said the United States had begun talking to the Taliban to try to reach a political, rather than military, settlement in Afghanistan something long demanded by Pakistan. One official source said how ever that it would be wrong to suggest that Pakistan had "done a deal with the United States, under which it might have delivered bin Laden in return for greater American acceptance of its position on Afghanistan.

denly gone out at 10 p.m. Some time later, at around 1 p.m., the electricity had come back on. Almost immediately, two small blasts followed by a large bang shook the windows in all the houses of the neighbourhood. Khizer said he was reluctant to accept President Ba-rack Obama's claim that bin Laden was dead. "There is always such a heavy presence of military around here.

I do not believe that he would have come here on his own accord." Passersby backed up Kh-izer's claim. They said the bin Ladens had lived in a "red zone" area, signifying exceptionally high security. Khizer said he regularly walked past the compound without Pakistan's help. "It is a joint operation, secretly collaborated, professionally carried out and satisfactorily ended," he said. "Yesterday's operation has belied all the allegations in the past that the CIA and ISI were not co-operating and that there was a rift between the CIA and the ISI," he said.

The Central Intelligence Agency and the Inter-Services Intelligence have had a very public row over recent months, including tensions about drone missile attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas, and the arrest of a CIA contractor after he shot dead two Pakistanis in the city of Lahore. Yet at the same time, the and the only place in Abbottabad where the tension was palpable. A heavy military presence halted further progress. In the near darkness we could see the silhouette of the buildings where bin Laden had died we were told that his heavily fortified compound was nearly 100 metres from where we stood. Local people told us that the police and soldiers were removing items and collecting evidence from the house.

"They don't want it to turn into a shrine," one said. Walking back up the hill we turned right into the smart offices of the Paradise furniture and mobile centre. Behind the counter Khizer, 20, a student, told us that the lights in the town had sud battle against al-Qaeda. A senior VS. official, quoted on the White House website, suggested at a press briefing that Pakistan had been excluded.

"We shared our intelligence on this bin Laden compound with no other country, including Pakistan. That was for one reason and one reason alone: We believed it was essential to the security of the operation and our personneL In fact, only a very small group of people inside our own government knew of this operation in advance." Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, told Reuters, however, that the operation would not have been possible says killing was a team effort "Was it possible without our help? No," another Pakistani security official said. "It was a joint intelligence operation." Pakistan has been reluctant to detail the extent of its involvement in the raid on a compound in Abbottabad, a garrison town north of Islamabad, in an area which is also home to the Pakistan Military Academy. The announcement by President Barack Obama that U.S. forces had killed bin Laden not in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan but rather in the heart of the country has also raised questions about how far Pakistan was co-operating in the MYRA MACDONALD Reuters LONDON An operation to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden was run jointly by Pakistan and the United States, Pakistani sources said on Monday, belying perceptions of a rift in relations between the two countries' spy agencies.

Bin Laden was killed by US. forces in Pakistan on Monday, ending a nearly 10-year manhunt for the man who orchestrated the Sept 2001 attacks on the United States. "Without our involvement this operation would not have succeeded," one Pakistani official source said. ur.k.