Sulaiman Abu Ghaith’s Unexpected Testimony in New York Terrorism Trial

On Wednesday, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith (also identified as Sulaiman Abu Ghayth), the Kuwaiti cleric who is on trial in New York accused of terrorism, surprised the court by taking to the witness stand to defend himself.

Abu Ghaith, 48, who was held for over ten years under a form of house arrest in Iran before being freed in Turkey, and, via Jordan, ending up in US custody last year, appeared in broadcasts from Afghanistan immediately after the 9/11 attacks as a spokesman for Al-Qaeda.

He is charged with conspiracy to kill United States nationals, conspiracy to provide material support and resources to terrorists, and providing material support and resources to terrorists — charges that include the claim that he had knowledge of Al-Qaeda’s operations, including plots involving shoe bombs (for which a British man, Richard Reid, was arrested, tried and convicted in 2002). As the New York Times described it, the government “said in court papers that as part of his role in the conspiracy and the support he provided to Al Qaeda, Mr. Abu Ghaith spoke on behalf of the terrorist group, ‘embraced its war against America,’ and sought to recruit others to join in that conspiracy.”

Abu Ghaith denies any knowledge of Al-Qaeda’s operations, and on Wednesday, just before the defence rested its case, he “offered an extraordinarily intimate look at [Osama] Bin Laden at the time [of the 9/11 attacks], taking jurors inside his cave in Afghanistan,” as the New York Times put it.

In his testimony, in which he was questioned by his lawyer, Stanley Cohen, Abu Ghaith explained how he had traveled to Afghanistan in June 2001 because of what he described as “a serious desire to get to know the new Islamic government in Afghanistan” — in other words, the Taliban — and described how he was invited to meet bin Laden in Kandahar. At a second meeting, he said, bin Laden “said in your capacity as a sheikh, an imam, and a teacher, we want you to give some lectures and speeches. And to teach at a religious school … that we have.”

Abu Ghaith described the school, in Kandahar, as the Religious Institute (although it was generally known as the Institute of Islamic Studies), whose director was Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, a spiritual advisor to Al-Qaeda, who fell out with bin Laden over the 9/11 attacks, which he opposed.

Abu Ghaith didn’t speak or teach at the school, but, at bin Laden’s request, he did speak at two training camps, and, in response to questioning by Cohen about how bin Laden described the camps, he said, “It was a preparation camp, because as we know in sharia, in the Islamic law, everybody needs to be prepared. Like in any nation need to prepare themselves to be ready.”

Abu Ghaith then returned to Kuwait briefly to collect his wife and his seven children and bring them back to Kandahar, where Abu Hafs found him opportunities to speak at a mosque and where he also met bin Laden again. After some time, however, he became worried that the healthcare facilities were insufficient in Afghanistan for his wife, who was pregnant, and so he arranged for her and the children to leave for Pakistan, and then to return to Kuwait.

Abu Ghaith arrived back in Afghanistan (presumably from Pakistan) on September 7, 2001, just four days before the 9/11 attacks. Cohen asked him about his role at this time:

Q. By the way, from the first time you met Usama Bin Laden through September 8, had he asked you to be a spokesperson for Al Qaeda?

A. No.

Q. Did anyone ask you to be a spokesperson for Al Qaeda during that time?

A. No.

Q. Did you volunteer to be a spokesperson for Al Qaeda?

A. When I spoke that title or that position was not there.

Questioned about 9/11, Abu Ghaith explained that he was in Kabul on the day, at the house of a friend called Adil, and that he learned about the attacks “[f]rom the media, from the TV.” Cohen asked him, “Prior to 9/11 did you have any idea that that attack was going to occur?” and he replied, “No. Specifically, no, I didn’t have any idea” — although he later conceded, under cross-examination, that he had heard, in the training camps, that “something” might happen. Michael Ferrara, a prosecutor, asked him, “You knew something big was coming from Al-Qaeda?” and he replied, “Yes.”

Questioned by Stanley Cohen, Abu Ghaith said that, on the evening of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden sent someone to ask him to meet with him. They traveled by car, for two or three hours, into the mountains. Cohen asked him, “Why did you go see Usama Bin Laden after you heard about 9/11?” and he replied, “I went to see him. I didn’t — I didn’t know the subject which he wanted to see me for, so I went as, as usual. Whenever he asked to see me, I went.” He added that he had met bin Laden six or seven times before 9/11.

Asked to describe what happened when he met bin Laden on this occasion, Abu Ghaith said:

I arrived to that area at night, I believe. I found Usama Bin Laden with another group, a guard, security guard, the number of which was about 20 to 25 people. I found him in a cave inside a mountain in a rough terrain, rough mountain terrain with some villages, some small villages and some bedouins who lived there. Naturally, I greeted him.

He said, Come in, sit down.

He said, Did you learn about what happened?

I said, What do you mean?

He said, The attacks on the United States.

I said, Yes.

He said, We are the ones who did it. What do you expect to happen?

I said, Why are you asking me this question? I don’t know anything about these events.

He said, Well, since you saw, you learned about that huge event, what do you expect to happen?

I said, I am not a military analyst in order to predict.

He said, Well, what’s your take on this as a person in his 30s and have some experience of life?

I said, I don’t have any military expertise to tell you what’s going to happen.

I said, Politically, I said, America, if it was proven that you were the one who did this, will not settle until it accomplishes two things: To kill you and topple the state of Taliban.

He said, You are being too pessimistic.

I said, You asked my opinion, and this is my opinion.

The day after, Abu Ghaith said that, after breakfast, he saw bin Laden having a meeting in a cave with Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, and Abu Hafs al-Masri (aka Mohammed Atef), Al-Qaeda’s military chief, who was killed in November 2001. “I was not invited to join that meeting,” he said, adding, “I was outside. They sat about half an hour talking. Then he [bin Laden] asked, he called me in.” He continued:

And he said to me: Now, after these events, it’s no secret or it’s not hard it’s a no-brainer to predict what is going to happen. What you expected may actually happen. And I want to deliver a message to the world. And Dr. Ayman also wants to deliver a message. I want you to deliver that message or to address the world.

I said, Well, I am new in this field. I don’t have any experience or any knowledge about the subject. I don’t have any ability to form ideas around that subject.

He said, I am going to give you some points and you build around them that speech.

I said, If you would kindly spare me that mission, it will be better.

He said, No, I insist that you speak. This is your job. You are an imam, you are a speaker, and you will only discuss the religious aspect, which you are familiar with.

I don’t want to hide that I had some convictions that the nature of any conflict, whenever there is an oppression or injustice inflicted on someone that there could be possible reactions. Those reactions could be unpredictable.

Under some of these convictions, I accepted to speak.

Around two hours later, in front of the cave, Abu Ghaith made the speech that was recorded and issued on video. In court, this exchange took place with his lawyer:

Q. Did anyone give you a statement to read as part of that video or any words to use in that video?

A. Other than the bullet points that Usama Bin Laden had given me to build the speech around, no.

Q. When you say bullet points, what do you mean, sir?

A. The points around which I built the speech. He said mention some of the Koranic verses and some hadith, that justify why those attacks happened, the nature of the conflict. These were the points around which I built that speech.

Afterwards, Abu Ghaith said that he spent two to three weeks staying with bin Laden and his entourage, because “the situation at that time after [9/11], the events were very tense and the roadways were extremely dangerous. I did not have any personal means of transportation to move, so I was forced to stay with him with the rest of the group.”

He was also asked about subsequent videos that were made, including one in which he spoke of a “storm of aeroplanes,” and in response to questioning from Cohen, he confirmed that the phrase came from bin Laden, and added, “All the videos which I filmed were the thoughts and the points made by Sheikh Usama” — a point that I thought was particularly telling.

After his time with bin Laden, Abu Ghaith said they all went to Kabul, but then split up, and he stayed somewhere he had stayed previously, although he met with bin Laden again and made three more videos. Then, after no more than a week, he said that the situation in Kabul became insecure, and, like many other people, he then went to Jalalabad, and was eventually smuggled into Pakistan on a 16-hour route through the mountains. There, he said, he briefly met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who he had also met once in Afghanistan, although the meeting only involved “[c]asual talk.”

In connection with the videos Abu Ghaith was involved in making, the following exchange with Cohen also took place:

Q. By the way, when you made these videos, was it your intent to recruit anyone?

A. There’s no one who was capable of recruiting anyone except Usama Bin Laden. My intention was not to recruit anyone.

Q. What specifically was your intention?

A. My intention was to deliver a message, a message that I believed that oppression, if it befalls any nation, any people, any category of people, that category must revolt at some point. People do not accept oppression. They cannot take it. And what happened was a result, as I understand, a natural result for the oppression that befell Muslims. I wanted to proclaim the message that Muslims had to bear responsibility and defend themselves.

Abu Ghaith also responded to questioning about shoe bombs, stating that he had not heard about any plots, and had not heard about or met Richard Reid.

In further questioning, Abu Ghaith explained that, after his arrival in Pakistan, he was then taken to Karachi, and on to Iran, where he was at liberty for five months until the Iranian authorities seized him, and placed him under a form of arrest for over ten years.

As the New York Times put it, “Until Mr. Abu Ghaith took the stand, his lawyers had given no indication that they were going to have their client testify.” As I explained in an article last week, Abu Ghaith’s lawyers had submitted to the court written responses to questions that had been given to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at Guantánamo, and had been hoping to have permission for Mohammed himself to testify from Guantánamo, but the judge, Lewis Kaplan, would not allow his testimony, ruling that the defense had largely failed to establish that Mohammed “has personal knowledge of anything important to this matter.”

The jury is currently deliberating in Sulaiman Abu Ghaith’s case, and I will provide an update when they deliver their verdict. In the meantime, as Daphne Eviatar explained in an article for the Huffington Post, “Although the government claims only that [Abu Ghaith] made a handful of speeches for al Qaeda between May 2001 and 2002, it seeks to hold him responsible for the deaths of all Americans Al-Qaeda orchestrated between 1998 and 2013.” She added, “At a conference with the lawyers on Thursday after the defense rested its case, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who’s presided over this trial with a heavy hand since it started earlier this month, confirmed that that’s exactly how he will charge the jury on Monday.”

Although one of Abu Ghaith’s lawyers, Zoe Dolan, had attempted to get the judge to amend the proposed conspiracy charge so that Abu Ghaith couldn’t be held liable for everything Al-Qaeda did over a 15-year period, Judge Kaplan stated that, under US law, even if the jury decides Abu Ghaith only joined the Al-Qaeda conspiracy on September 12, “the defendant still will be held responsible for any acts that happened before he joined the conspiracy.”

As Eviatar stated, “Although I’m a lawyer and I’ve studied criminal justice, the breadth of US conspiracy law still astonishes me every time I hear about it. Its effect, in this case, is to make a Kuwaiti preacher who made a handful of speeches for Al-Qaeda over a few short months in Afghanistan personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of people killed long before he ever came on the scene. There’s no question that if the jury finds he joined the Al-Qaeda conspiracy, he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.”

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).