US News

Bin Laden’s son-in-law seeks access to Guantanamo Bay

A defense lawyer for Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith is seeking a court order requiring the Pentagon to grant him access to Guantanamo Bay so he can interview alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a witness before Abu Ghaith’s Feb. 24 Manhattan federal court terror trial.

In legal filings Tuesday, Stanley Cohen said getting access to Mohammed is crucial for Abu Ghaith’s defense considering Mohammed is widely credited with commissioning “shoe bomber” Richard Reid’s failed bid to blow up an airliner two months after 9/11 — and the government alleges Abu Ghayth played a key role on that terror plot.

“Mohammed’s information will directly and totally repudiate the government’s assertion that Mr. Abu Ghayth participated in, had any prior knowledge of, or conspired in any way to contribute to or provide material support for the ‘shoe bomb’ attacks,” Cohen wrote.

The move is in response to the feds plan to have Saajid Muhammad Badat testify at trial via closed-circuit TV from the United Kingdom.

The star witness, who is free in the UK after cutting a deal with British authorities, had a last-minute change of heart and pulled out of Reid’s botched terror plot aboard American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22, 2001.

Prosecutors expect him to testify Abu Ghayth knowingly took part in al Qaeda’s conspiracy to kill Americans, including the shoe-bomb plot, and visited the al Qaeda camp Matar, which provided training in “urban warfare.”

The feds also expect Badat to testify via closed-circuit TV in April at the Manhattan federal trial of handless hate preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri.