Er - not only that Keith. The US in this case were not acting on enemy held territory.

Please note that I am not saying that the death of ObL was necessarily a bad thing - we will have to wait and see. The manner of its doing was IMHO unlawful.



Fugitive from Sanity: ObL may have committed crimes. Was he lawfully taken tried and sentenced? No. Unless rule of law prevails there is only the power of the gun.

Generally:

There are statements circulating (and parts of them may be true) that there had been offers to surrender ObL for an unbiassed trial in an unbiassed jurisdiction - but that the USA refused to consider them. That may or may not be accurate, but it is disturbingly similar to the refusal of the USA to recognise the jurisdiction of other countries on war crimes. I cannot see how ObL could have got a fair trial in the USA - indeed with the number of gun nutters there it would have been difficult to see how he could have survived in the USA until trial.

Proper trial is what separates criminal process from vigilantism. While I do not claim to be a master of US procedural rules it seems to me plausible that any trial of ObL in the US would have fallen foul of the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine.