The United States may have to release photographs of Osama Bin Laden's corpse to smother any effort to claim he survived a daring weekend US special forces raid, top lawmakers have warned.
"It may be necessary to release the pictures - as gruesome as they undoubtedly will be, because he's been shot in the head - to quell any doubts that this somehow is a ruse that the American
government has carried out," said Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman.
Lieberman, an independent usually aligned with the White House, said he was "absolutely convinced that the man who was killed yesterday was Osama bin Laden" and that he would respect the White House's decision on the photographs.
But, he said, "unless there's an acknowledgement by people in al-Qaeda that bin Laden is dead," some may deny that DNA testing of the body proved it was the elusive terrorist mastermind.
Senator Susan Collins, the top Republican on Lieberman's committee, also declared she has "absolutely no doubt" bin Laden had been killed in his fortified, secretive compound in Pakistan's city of Abbottabad.
"But I recognise that there will be those who will try to generate this myth that he's alive, and that we missed him somehow, and in order to put that to rest it may be necessary to release
some of the pictures, or video, or the DNA test," she said.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican, said US officials were working through whether to release photos of bin Laden's corpse.
"We want to make sure that we maintain dignity - if there was any - in Osama bin Laden, so that we don't inflame problems in other places in the world and still provide enough evidence that people
are confident that it was Osama bin Laden," he said.
