U.S. Formally Drops Charges Against bin Laden

NEW YORK—Federal prosecutors formally dropped criminal charges Friday against Osama bin Laden following his death last month in a raid by U.S. forces.

The move officially closes a criminal case against bin Ladin, the al Qaeda leader, stemming from a 1998 indictment naming him and others in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Bin Laden had been accused of helping plan truck bombings outside U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 people and injured thousands.

The charges were formally dismissed Friday through a so-called nolle prosequi filing in a Manhattan federal court by the U.S. Department of Justice as a result of his death.

Bin Laden was killed May 1 by U.S. Navy SEALs as they stormed a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

In a court filing, Deputy Assistant Attorney General George Z. Toscas said the U.S. government confirmed Mr. bin Laden's death through DNA samples, facial recognition technology and by verifying it with one of his wives who lived in the compound.

The raid also recovered "a significant quantity" of al Qaeda material, including correspondence by Mr. bin Laden and a previously unreleased video of him, Mr. Toscas said.

Last month, a lawyer seeking to represent Khalid al-Fawwaz, a Saudi man who the U.S. claims previously acted as bin Laden's public-relations representative, said in a court filing that Mr. al-Fawwaz could be extradited within months from the U.K. to face criminal charges in the bombings.

Mr. al-Fawwaz, a Saudi exile living in London, has fought extradition to the U.S. for more than a decade.

For a four-year period in the 1990s, Mr. al-Fawwaz ran the London office of the Advice and Reformation Committee, where U.S. officials have said he acted as bin Laden's public-relations man, according to the criminal indictment against him.

In January, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first former detainee of the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be tried in a U.S. civilian court, was sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted last year of conspiracy in the 1998 bombings.

Four others were convicted and received life sentences in a separate 2001 trial in New York stemming from the bombings.