Justice, American Style: Was Bin Laden's Killing Legal? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Justice, American Style: Was Bin Laden's Killing Legal? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International: "Claus Kress, an international law professor at the University of Cologne, argues that achieving retributive justice for crimes, difficult as that may be, is 'not achieved through summary executions, but through a punishment that is meted out at the end of a trial.' Kress says the normal way of handling a man who is sought globally for commissioning murder would be to arrest him, put him on trial and ultimately convict him. In the context of international law, military force can be used in the arrest of a suspect, and this may entail gun fire or situations of self-defense that, in the end, leave no other possibility than to kill a highly dangerous and highly suspicious person. These developments can also lead to tragic and inevitable escalations of the justice process."