Painstaking effort to ID bin Laden

NEW YORK - Federal authorities used DNA from "multiple family members" and facial recognition technology to identify the body of Osama bin Laden, according to court papers filed Friday that formally dropped terrorism charges against the slain al-Qaeda leader.

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

After the raid, U.S. forces collected DNA from bin Laden's body and took it to a base in Afghanistan, said a statement signed by a top U.S. counterterrorism official, Deputy Assistant Attorney General George Z. Toscas.

CIA personnel there compared it "with a comprehensive DNA profile derived from DNA collected from multiple members of bin Laden's family," the statement said. "These tests confirmed that the sample [from the raid] genetically matched the derived comprehensive DNA profile for Osama bin Laden."

It added: "The possibility of a mistaken identification is approximately one in 11.8 quadrillion."

The CIA used the facial recognition technology to compare old photos of bin Laden to photos of his body, the papers said, and concluded "with high confidence that the deceased individual was bin Laden."

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."

The papers filed in federal court in Manhattan officially ended a case that began with hopes of seeing bin Laden brought to justice in a civilian court.

A grand jury voted to indict the al-Qaeda leader in June 1998 on charges that he supported the ambush that left 18 U.S. soldiers dead in Somalia in 1993. The indictment was originally filed under seal but was made public later that year.

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

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.