CAIRO, May 2: US officials said on Monday that Osama bin Laden was buried at sea to avoid a “shrine” situation.

“We wanted to avoid a situation where it would become a shrine,” one official said, adding that there was no time for negotiations with other countries to arrange for a possible burial.

A senior US defence official said that US forces administered Muslim religious rites for Bin Laden aboard an aircraft carrier earlier in the day in the Arabian Sea.

“Today religious rights were conducted for the deceased on the deck of the USS Carl-Vinson which is located in the North Arabian Sea,” the official said.

“Traditional procedures for Islamic burial were followed. The deceased’s body was washed and then placed in a white sheet. The body was placed in a weighted bag.

“A military officer read prepared religious remarks which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. After the words were complete, the body was placed on a prepared flat-board... (and) eased into the sea.”

The ceremony began at 0510 GMT and ended some 50 minutes later aboard the aircraft carrier which is stationed off the coast of Pakistan to help US and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Al-Azhar, the top Islamic seat of learning based in Cairo, criticised the burial at sea of Bin Laden’s body.

“If it is true that the body was thrown into the sea, then Islam is totally against that,” Mahmud Azab, an adviser to the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb, said.

“Any corpse, if it belongs to someone murdered or someone who died of natural causes, must be respected,” said Azab, the adviser to Al-Azhar’s chief for inter-religious affairs.

“The bodies of believers and non-believers, Muslim or Christian, must be respected,” he said, adding that Tayeb was due to issue a formal statement. “Islam only accepts burials” at sea unless it is inevitable like for those who drown, he said.—AFP