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Imagine if the United States Navy SEALs, under the command of President Barack Obama, had not shot down and buried at sea Osama bin Laden, head of al-Qaeda and mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In his narrative, Fleury imagines a scenario in which bin Laden is criminally tried—in a court of law—for the heinous crimes he committed which killed nearly 3,000 Americans and injured and altered forever the lives of scores more. “Arrested, bin Laden to be judged,” writes the author, “this decision would have been in the interest of the United States, and as well it would have helped other countries in search of information on terrorist networks.” Fleury argues passionately that prosecuting bin Laden, rather than executing him, would have avoided making him a “martyr” amongst Jihadist sympathizers.
In addition to serving as a creative guide to how such a criminal trial might have looked and sounded, Fleury provides a massive amount of detailed information surrounding the 9/11 attacks, Jihadist ideology, financing of the deadly attacks, and accounts of how the entire world responded on that fateful day in September of 2001. Ultimately, a strong argument is made for capturing and putting on trial bin Laden (and other associated individuals responsible for 9/11). In this sense, Fleury’s material serves the double role of performing as weighty reference material on 9/11 and al-Qaeda in general, as well as an intellectual exercise specifically in just what such a trial for bin Laden might, after all, have looked like.