Details of the ''firefight'' are still obscure. The law permits criminals to be shot if they or their accomplices resist arrest in ways that endanger those striving to apprehend them. They should be given the opportunity to surrender, if possible, but even if they do not come out with their hands up, they must be taken alive if that can be achieved without risk. Exactly how bin Laden came to be ''shot in the head'' therefore requires explanation. And why a hasty burial at sea without an autopsy, as the law requires?

The US is celebrating summary execution, rationalised on the basis that this is one terrorist for whom a trial would be unnecessary, difficult and dangerous. It overlooks the downsides - that killing bin Laden has made him a martyr, more dangerous in that posthumous role than in hiding, and that his legend and the conspiracy theories about September 11 will live on, undisputed by the evidence that would have been called to convict him.

Moreover, killing bin Laden gave him the consummation he most devoutly wished, namely a fast-track to paradise. His belief system required him to die mid-jihad, from an infidel bullet - not of old age on a prison farm in upstate New York. He would have refused any offer to surrender, and no doubt died with a smile on his lips.

I do not minimise the security problems of holding a trial or overlook the danger of it ending up as a squalid circus like that of Saddam Hussein. But the notion that any legal process would have been too hard must be rejected. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - also alleged to be an architect of September 11 - will go on trial shortly. Had bin Laden been captured he should have been in the dock alongside him, so that their shared responsibility could have been properly examined.

Bin Laden could not have been tried for the attacks on the twin towers at the International Criminal Court, since its jurisdiction only came into existence nine months later. But the United Nations Security Council could have set up an ad hoc tribunal in The Hague, with international judges (including Muslim jurists), to provide a fair trial and a reasoned verdict that would have convinced the Arab street of his guilt.