A FEDERAL judge today refused to order the Obama Administration to release photographs and videos of the operation that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden last year.

"A picture may be worth a thousand words," US District Judge James Boasberg wrote. "Yet, in this case, verbal descriptions of the death and burial of Osama Bin Laden will have to suffice, for this Court will not order the release of anything more."

After bin Laden was killed in a daring raid by US Navy SEALs at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011, President Barack Obama decided that no photos or videos of the operation or the slain terror leader would be publicly released.

"We don't need to spike the football and I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk," Mr Obama told CBS' 60 Minutes. "We don't trot out this stuff as trophies."

Government watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request the day after bin Laden was killed asking the CIA and the Department of Defense to publicly release photographs and video of the raid.

The Defense Department claimed it had no documents that matched Judicial Watch's request and the CIA said it had 52 documents, but would not release them due to their classified designation.

Judicial Watch then sued both agencies, claiming the Defense Department did not conduct an adequate search and the CIA's documents did not fall under exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act.

Justice Boasberg found in favour of both the CIA and the Defense Department Thursday.

"The Court declines Plaintiff's invitation to substitute its own judgment about the national-security risks inherent in releasing these records for that of the executive-branch officials who determined that they should be classified," Justice Boasberg wrote.