After showing jurors video of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law threatening no end to the “storm of airplanes” in the days after 9/11, and warning Muslims to stay off planes, prosecutors Monday quizzed a confessed terrorist about his role in a shoe-bomb plot to down a US-bound plane.
Prosecutors showed the Manhattan federal jury clips of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith threatening Americans in the weeks after the terror attacks to set the stage for testimony from Saajid Badat, 34, by video from London.
Badat, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to conspiring to harm an aircraft, has been freed from prison in England for his cooperation in terrorism cases.
“We were both supposed to explode a device on two separate airplanes,” Badat said of failed shoe-bombing accomplice Richard Reid. But Badat backed out.
Before Badat spoke, jurors saw video of Abu Ghaith warning Muslims to stay off planes in the US and England because “the storm of airplanes will not abate.”
Abu Ghaith, 48, is the highest-ranking al Qaeda figure to face trial on US soil since the 9/11 attacks.