NEW YORK: The son-in-law of Osama bin Laden acted as the al-Qaida leader’s right-hand man and appeared alongside the terror mastermind in a propaganda video just one day after the carnage of the 9/11 attacks, US prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Launching the most prominent 9/11-related terror trial held in New York to date, federal prosecutors said Suleiman Abu Ghaith had been one of bin Laden’s key lieutenants in the days and months after the September 11, 2001 attacks which left 3,000 people dead.
The Manhattan trial is taking place just streets from where the World Trade Center was reduced to burning rubble by two airliners hijacked by al-Qaida suicide attackers.
Abu Ghaith is on trial for conspiracy to kill Americans, conspiracy to provide support and providing material support to terrorists.
The 48-year-old from Kuwait pleads not guilty to all three charges. He faces life in prison if convicted.
He is the most senior alleged al-Qaida member to face trial in a US federal court rather than at Guantanamo Bay, which the White House has promised to close.
Wearing a dark suit, he sat impassively as prosecutors played the video in which he sat next to bin Laden and the current leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Afghanistan on September 12, 2001.
He was similarly unmoved as the court watched a clip of him lecturing and gesticulating, dressed in a black turban in Afghanistan.
He spoke only to confirm when asked by Judge Lewis Kaplan that he understood proceedings, and listened to simultaneous translation provided on an ear piece.
Abu Ghaith is not accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, but of recruiting personnel for al-Qaida, or what the prosecution called its “very lifeblood”. (Agencies)