0 U.S. officially drop all charges against Osama bin Laden

A U.S. judge has dismissed all criminal charges against Osama bin Laden following the al Qaeda leader's death in a military raid in Pakistan.

Cleared: Due to his death.

U.S. District Court judge Lewis Kaplan, who had been presiding over the bin Laden case in Manhattan federal court, issued an order called 'nolle prosequi', which means 'do not prosecute' in Latin, a typical legal move once a defendant is deceased.

It closed the case after 13 years.

Bin Laden was indicted back in 1998 in the Southern District of New York for his role in the al Qaeda attack on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which killed more than 200 people, including a dozen Americans.

The indictment was later revised to charge bin Laden in the dual bombings of two American embassies in East Africa that killed 224 on August 7, 1998, and in the suicide attack on the USS Cole in 2000. None of the charges involved the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The court filing included an affidavit by a senior U.S. Department of Justice official describing the U.S. military raid on bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May.

According to ABC, after reciting Bin Laden's multiple aliases and then listing the counts against him for ten pages, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Lewin noted: 'On or about May 1, 2011, while this case was still pending, defendant Usama Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the course of an operation conducted by the United States.'

Lewin then provides evidence that bin Laden was actually killed in the raid, including the confirmation of his identity by DNA analysis and facial recognition analysis, eyewitness confirmation by one of bin Laden's wives, video of bin Laden found in the Abbottabad compound and the 'significant quantity' of other al Qaeda material seized by U.S. Navy Seals during last month's raid.

The papers detail the CIA's painstaking efforts to make sure the man killed May 2 during a Navy SEALs raid of his compound in Pakistan was indeed bin Laden.

Osama's charge sheet did not list the September 11th terror  attacks as one of his crimes.

The statement said: 'The possibility of a mistaken identification is approximately one in 11.8 quadrillion.'

The document also makes a passing reference to a 'significant quantity' of terrorist network material recovered at the hideout, including 'correspondence between Osama bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda leaders that concerns a range of al Qaeda issues'.

Also named as a defendant was Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian eye doctor and longtime bin Laden deputy who has become al Qaeda's new leader.

The charges included conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. nationals and conspiracy to damage and destroy U.S. property.

Around the time the charges were first filed, the CIA's bin Laden unit was pursuing a plan to use Afghan operatives to capture bin Laden and hand him over for trial either in the United States or in an Arab country, according to the 9/11 Commission.

Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/U-S-officially-drop-charges-Osama-bin-Laden
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After consulting the "book of knowledge" wikipedia, here is a better explanation of "Nolle prosequi" relevant parts highlighted:

Nolle prosequi is a declaration made by a prosecutor in a criminal case or by a plaintiff in a civil lawsuit either before or during trial, meaning the case against the defendant is being dropped. The declaration may be made because the charges cannot be proved, the evidence has demonstrated either innocence or a fatal flaw in the prosecution's claim, or the prosecutor no longer thinks the accused is guilty, and/or the accused has died. 
It is generally made after indictment, but is not a guarantee that the person will not be reindicted.

In civil cases, a nolle prosequi may be entered as to one of several counts or to one of several defendants. In a criminal case, it has been held improper for a court to enter an order of nolle prosequi on its own without a motion by the prosecutor. As long as a jury trial has not been commenced, the entry of a nolle prosequi is not an adjudication on the merits of the prosecution, and the legal protection against double jeopardy will not automatically bar the charges from being brought again in some fashion.

Nolle prosequi is similar to a declination of prosecution, which is an agreement not to prosecute which may be made by an attorney, but also by the aggrieved party. In contrast, nolle prosequi is usually made after a decision to prosecute has already been made.  
A declination of prosecution may be made for many reasons, such as weak evidence or a conflict of interest.

Not such an "open and shut" case if you are able to read between the lines of what has actually happened here...
it stinks.