Posted on 05/03/2011 7:06:17 AM PDT by PilotDave
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee told the AP that more than one DNA sample was used to identify bin Laden.
One problem – whose DNA did they compare it to?
According to several reports, U.S. intelligence experts have been collecting DNA from Osama’s many relatives for years. Hospital officials in Boston have been unable to confirm reports that one source of DNA was bin Laden’s half-sister, who allegedly died of brain cancer at a Harvard-affiliated hospital.
Bin Laden had plenty of half-brothers and half-sisters to offer DNA samples. He was the 17th child of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, who had 54 children with 22 wives. Bin Laden’s father died when he was 10.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
And in that case, says Stephen Quake, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor of applied physics and bioengineering at Stanford University, all the DNA analysis will say for sure is that the dead person is one of the many sons of Osama bin Laden’s father.
How did the FBI get her DNA?
Can they get mine? Or yours?
Another aspect of the Bin Laden business:
It is interesting to note that the courier’s name has not attracted much attention. Checking the history of Ayman al-Zawahiri, his Islamist bent was greatly influenced
by the activity of Muhammad al-Faraj, former Muslim Brother and founder of the radical Tanzim al-Jihad movement. In a pamphlet titled Al Faridah Al-Ghaibah (Neglected Duty) which was disseminated widely, Faraj argued that jihad, or combat against kufr (unbelievers) and apostates, was is in fact the “Sixth Pillar” of Islam and the neglected duty of all Muslims (a policy adopted by Al Qaeda and all Jihadist movements). Faraj counted among his many followers not only Zawahiri but Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman the blind
cleric who would be named in 1981 to serve as intellectual and spiritual advisor of yet another Islamist offshoot, the Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya. Faraj was charged with the intellectual if not direct responsibility for the assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat in October 1981 and was executed.
The use of the nom-de-guerre Abu Faraz al-Libi (the Libyan) indicates to me that the name was not given by accident and the courier likely had a close relationship with both Bin Laden and Zawahiri.
She died in a Boston hospital of brain cancer. I read that her dna was aquired per a court order.
Who says the government has to TELL THE TRUTH about DNA? They don’t need a sibling. They don’t even need a DNA test. They make up documents by the hour; why should they even need a body?
I think hers was obtained by court order. But they really can get just about anyone’s DNA if they want. Discarded food, food containers or other garbage are free game for DNA. It’s called abandoned DNA and the courts have pretty much allowed it....no warrant required.
OOps, sorry Pilot Dave, the courier’s name was Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
There is some confusion here about DNA profiling. When only trace tissue samples are available, the DNA has to be amplified, which takes time, days. When larger samples are available, the DNA can be studied for its unique sections that repeat within family members. Generally, when at least 15 "markers" can be found, HLA-DQ alpha reverse dot blot strips can be created and put in a field kit.
By dissolving, say a blood sample, results are obtained in minutes. Each marker hit adds a statistical certainty than can be added up. Once you get beyond 99.9%+ the results get very statistically large, in the multi-millions, very quickly if you have a match.
For example, say you have all 15 hits. Multiply 2x3x4x5x6.....x15 and see how big the number gets.
We have had the chance to get common markers pointing to Bin Laden from many dozens of family members.
Lick an envelope, you can be DNA typed.
To analyze the repeat units, the DNA is always amplified no matter how much DNA they have. It takes less than one hour to do so, not days.
Sheik Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti
is that the nom-de-guerre?
According to last week's wikileaks dump (which may have forced the US hand early) the courier was Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan. Also interesting that Abu Faraj al-Libi was himself hiding out in Abbotabad before his 2005 capture (by the Pakistanis).
Depending on the size of the sample and how much it was corrupted. Let’s not nit pick, my point is, you need large samples to create field kits that can be analyzed, during say, a firefight in the middle of the night in Pakistan when you don’t have any time for amplification.
After you're dead? Sure, if a judge will go along with it.
Al-Libi later admitted that he had lived there along with others, the the house was an AQ and Waziri safe house nothing more.
We were put off because there were no guards to speak of and the house was well known in the neighborhood as the Waziri mansion.
Only under close surveillance over many months did enough clues emerge that Bin Laden might be there. The op was flushed out last week by Wikileaks and by the arrest of a key Indonesian terrorist, both naming Abbottabad as a key AQ location.
Bin Laden would have soon bailed out if we had not acted when we did.
The military has field machines for amplification and analysis that are very fast. Amount of DNA really isn’t an issue anymore.
Just after I wrote my reply I googled “courier Bin Laden” and Wikileaks and other sites had info on Al-Kuwaiti that went back to the late 1990s. I should have recalled that Abu Faraj al-Libi had already been picked up and was residing at the Guantanamo Hotel.
Thank you gandalftb for the pings and info.
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