He’s “no accidental terrorist.”
That’s the message a prosecutor had Monday for a Manhattan federal jury who’ll decide the fate of Osama bin Laden’s terror-preaching son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith.
While delivering closing arguments in the three-week terror trial, assistant US Attorney John Cronan said the al-Qaeda leader recruited the 48-year-old imam from Kuwait to be the group’s “mouthpiece” immediately following the 9/11 airplane-hijacking attacks that brought down the Twin Towers, demolished a vast section of the Pentagon and left one jumbo jet destroyed in a Pennsylvania field.
He also said Abu Ghaith eagerly agreed to be al-Qaeda’s “mouthpiece” by spreading its “message of hate” against America through a series of audio and video tapes aimed at recruiting Muslim militants to join its cause.
“In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001,… al-Qaeda needed to send a message: a message that al-Qaeda’s attacks of Sept. 11 were justified, that the attacks were deserved and that the US got what it deserved — a message to Americans that it would happen again,” he said.
“So just hours after four planes came crashing into our country, amid al-Qaeda’s savage success and the other chaos of that terrible day, Osama bin Laden turned to this man,” added Cronan, while pointing to a stone-faced Abu Ghaith, who was dressed in a black suit jacket with a white shirt opened at the collar.
Cronan also tried to shoot down comments Abu Ghaith’s made last week on the witness stand, saying Abu Ghaith isn’t the “accidental terrorist” he then claimed to be.
“The defendant was no accidental terrorist who stumbled upon Al Qaeda,” the prosecutor said. “This man was not Osama Bin Laden’s robot. He was not his puppet.”
He also told jurors the evidence against the defendant — particularly the audio and videotapes — is overwhelming.
In one video, on Oct. 9, 2001, Abu Ghaith threatened that “America must know that the storm of airplanes will not abate.”
But Abu Ghaith’s lawyer, Stanley Cohen, countered in his closing that there was “no evidence” his client played any major role in al-Qaeda following the aftermath of 9/11. He accused prosecutors of seeking to manipulate jurors by showing them a World Trade Center devastation video and endlessly referencing 9/11, even though Abu Ghaith isn’t charged in the attack.
The video “was designed to sweep you away in anguish and pain and to ask for retaliation,” he said.
Abu Ghaith alleges he only agreed to meet with bin Laden in an Afghanistan cave hours after 9/11 out of “respect” to the al-Qaeda leader and that he and played no role in the attacks on Americans.
He also claims he based his videotaped and audio-taped sermons strictly on notes and “bullet points” provided by bin Laden.
He married bin Laden’s eldest daughter, Fatima, about seven years after 9/11.
Abu Ghaith faces life in prison if convicted of conspiring to kill Americans and of providing material support to al Qaeda.