Bin Laden son-in-law takes stand in NYC court in own defense

NEW YORK -- In surprise testimony in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday, Osama bin Laden's son-in-law recounted the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, when the al Qaeda leader sent a messenger to drive him into a mountainous area for a meeting inside a cave in Afghanistan.

"Did you learn what happened? We are the ones who did it," the son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, recalled bin Laden telling him.

When bin Laden asked what he thought would happen next, Abu Ghaith testified that he responded by predicting America "will not settle until it kills you and topples the state of the Taliban."

Bin Laden responded: "You're being too pessimistic," Abu Ghaith recalled.

Bin Laden then told the onetime imam, "I want to deliver a message to the world. ... I want you to deliver the message," he said.

The testimony came at Abu Ghaith's trial on charges he conspired to kill Americans and aid al Qaeda as a spokesman for the terrorist group. His decision to take the witness stand was announced by his lawyer, Stanley Cohen, who surprised a nearly empty courtroom that quickly filled with spectators as word spread.

Testifying through an Arabic interpreter, the 48-year-old Kuwaiti-born defendant said he went to Afghanistan for the first time in June 2001 because he had a "serious desire to get to know the new Islamic government in Afghanistan."

He said he met bin Laden when the al Qaeda leader, who was living in Kandahar, Afghanistan, summoned him after hearing that he was a preacher from Kuwait.

Abu Ghaith said bin Laden explained that the al Qaeda training camps involved so much weapons training and a rough, hard life that he wanted him to change that, to reach the hearts of recruits and show them another side of life.

Abu Ghaith said he knew bin Laden was suspected in terrorist attacks but still "wanted to get to know that person."

"I wanted to see what he had, what is it he wanted," he said.

The defendant testified that videos he made warning that there would be more attacks on Americans and trying to inspire others to join al Qaeda's cause were based on "quotes and points by Sheik Osama," including at threat in one video that "the storm of airplanes will not abate." He also denied allegations by the government that he had prior knowledge of the failed shoe-bomb airline attack by Richard Reid in December 2001.

He said he stayed for two to three weeks after Sept. 11 in a cave in a mountainous part of Afghanistan with bin Laden and others because the "situation was tense and the roads were dangerous."

He testified that his videotaped sermons were religious in nature, and meant to encourage Muslims to fight oppression.

If "oppression befalls ... any category of people, that category of people must revolt," he said.

Abu Ghaith said his intention was not to recruit.

"My intention was to deliver a message, a message I believed in," he said. "I was hoping the United States would say, 'Let's sit down and talk and solve these problems,' but America was going on and doing what I expected them to do."

Abu Ghaith is married to bin Laden's eldest daughter, Fatima. According to Cohen, they were married in 2008 or 2009.

The defendant looked relaxed on the witness stand, wearing a blue shirt, open at the collar, beneath a charcoal-colored jacket. His hands were sometimes folded before him, though sometimes he waved or pointed them for emphasis.

The announcement that he would testify energized jurors, who became more animated as they looked around the courtroom as it filled. Some of them leaned forward and toward the witness as Abu Ghaith spoke.

Some of his answers went beyond the questions posed to him and led to a warning from U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who said he should answer directly and "save the speeches for some other time."

Kaplan did not immediately rule on Cohen's request that the defense be permitted to call Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-professed architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a witness via a video link from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he is imprisoned.

Cohen said it wasn't the right time to pursue that request, which was denied by Kaplan on Tuesday but was renewed after Mohammed confirmed he would be willing to testify.

"I've got a few other things on the fire right now," Cohen said.

The Kuwaiti-born defendant was flown to the United States a year ago from Jordan, where he was captured as he headed to Kuwait, which had revoked his citizenship after 9/11.

The CIA's Bin Laden group was able to track Abu Ghaith's movements to a luxury hotel in downtown Ankara. Abu Ghaith hoped to get help from the al Qaeda network to move to another country, but the CIA was working with the MIT, Turkey's national intelligence service, and they arrested Abu Ghaith.