Weeks after he was first arrested in Turkey, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who once served as a spokesman for al Qaeda will appear in a New York courtroom to face terrorism charges that could result in life imprisonment.
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who is married to one of Bin Laden’s daughters, Fatima, is to be charged with conspiracy to kill Americans, according to an indictment released on Thursday. Justice Department officials described him as a propagandist who they believe has not had an operational role in al Qaeda for years and did not participate in the attacks on September 11, 2001, or in any plots against the United States. But one law enforcement official said that Abu Ghaith, 47, was the most senior Qaeda figure to face criminal trial in New York since America’s war against the terrorist network began.
Abu Ghaith was a Muslim preacher and teacher in Kuwait who spoke out against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In 2000, he traveled to Afghanistan, where he met Bin Laden and eventually married one of his daughters. He attracted wide attention in the days after the September 11 attacks by making statements defending the attacks.
According to an indictment unsealed on Thursday, Abu Ghaith appeared with Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, who was then Bin Laden’s deputy, and warned the United States and its allies that a “great army is gathering against you”. He called upon “the nation of Islam” to do battle against “the Jews, the Christians and the Americans”.
He also urged people at a guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan, to swear allegiance to Bin Laden, and on the night of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Bin Laden summoned him and asked for his assistance, which he agreed to provide, according to the indictment.
The arrest of Abu Ghaith was the rare occasion in which a Qaeda operative was detained overseas rather than killed. The Obama administration has expanded the use of targeted killing operations in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, asserting that they are justified when there is no possibility of capture.
But the plan to put Abu Ghaith on trial in New York City drew immediate criticism.
Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, the chairman of the House Select Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that Qaeda leaders captured on the battlefield should not be brought to the United States to stand trial. “We should treat enemy combatants like the enemy — the US court system is not the appropriate venue. The president needs to send any captured al Qaeda members to Guantánamo,” he said.
Julie Menin, the former chairwoman of Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan, who opposed the earlier plan to try senior Qaeda operatives in New York, said she was in favor of a Manhattan trial for Abu Ghaith.
“I think it is a very different situation,” said Menin, who is running for Manhattan borough president and said her opposition to the earlier trial was based on the intense disruption that security precautions would have brought to the neighbourhood.
