Bin Laden's son-in-law captured, charged in US with conspiring to kill Americans

Bin Laden's son-in-law captured, charged in US with conspiring to kill Americans


Published March 07, 2013

FoxNews.com
A top Al Qaeda spokesman who is the son-in-law of Usama bin Laden has been captured overseas and charged in the United States with conspiracy to kill Americans, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, first revealed that Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was captured in Jordan, and sources told Fox News he was apprehended "some time ago," without giving specifics.

He is expected to appear Friday morning in a federal court in New York City to face the charges.

"It has been 13 years since Abu Ghaith allegedly worked alongside Usama Bin Laden in his campaign of terror, and 13 years since he allegedly took to the public airwaves, exhorting others to embrace Al Qaeda's cause and warning of more terrorist attacks like the mass murder of 9/11," U.S. Attorney Bharara said in a news release announcing Abu Ghaith's arrest. "The memory of those attacks is indelibly etched on the American psyche, and today's action is the latest example of our commitment to capturing and punishing enemies of the United States, no matter how long it takes."

Attorney General Eric Holder added, "No amount of distance or time will weaken our resolve to bring America's enemies to justice."

But the news sparked criticism from Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte, who said Thursday the Obama administration's decision to bring Abu Ghaith to court in New York is wrong, "sneaky" and against the will of Congress.

Graham says Abu Ghaith is clearly an enemy combatant and should have been sent straight to the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility in Cuba for extended questioning.

Abu Ghaith became an international name in late 2001 when he appeared on pan-Arab satellite television urging Muslims everywhere to fight the United States and warning of more attacks similar to those of Sept. 11. In one video, he was sitting with bin Laden in front of a rock face in Afghanistan. A teacher and mosque preacher in Kuwait, he was stripped of his Kuwaiti citizenship after 9/11.

He is identified as a major Al Qaeda core official by the New America Foundation think tank in Washington. King said Abu Ghaith was involved in the planning in the 9/11 attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

"Definitely, one by one, we are getting the top echelons of Al Qaeda," King said. "I give the (Obama) administration credit for this: It's steady and it's unrelenting and it's very successful."

It's likely that Abu Ghaith will face a host of terrorism-related charges and possibly murder, which could carry the death penalty, said attorney Michael Rosensaft, who was a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan until last fall and is now in private practice. He predicted the trial will last months, if not years, and that some of the evidence against Abu Ghaith will be a challenge for prosecutors to bring to court if it is classified.

Abu Ghaith's trial will make one of the few prosecutions of senior Al Qaeda leaders on U.S. soil. Charging foreign terror suspects in American federal courts was a top pledge by President Obama shortly after he took office in 2009 -- aimed, in part, to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

On Thursday, King called Ghaith's capture a "very significant victory" in U.S. efforts against Al Qaeda. "The propaganda statements in which Abu Ghaith and his late father-in-law, Usama bin Laden, praised the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are alone enough to merit the most serious punishment," King said

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on the capture when asked during Thursday's press briefing.


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Bin Laden son-in-law detained overseas, brought to New York

By Mark Hosenball and Daniel Trotta | Reuters – 10 hrs ago


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Reuters - Al-Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Bu Ghaith speaks in an undated video message carried on Qatar's al-Jazeera television October 9, 2001 saying that the militant group believed in "terrorism against oppressors". …more [Osama bin Laden's] al-Qaeda group said on Tuesday that hijacked plane attacks on the United States would continue and that the "battle" would not end until America withdraws from Muslim lands. The station did not explain the origin of the statement but it appeared to be a video recording. Sulaiman Bu Ghaith had appeared with [bin Laden] on a recorded statement issued via Jazeera last Sunday. REUTERS less





WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Prosecutors unsealed an indictment against a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden on Thursday that charged him with conspiracy to kill Americans, after government sources said he was arrested overseas and brought to New York.
Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a militant who appeared in videos representing al Qaeda after the September 11 attacks in 2001, had initially been picked up in Turkey and was brought to the United States in an operation led by Jordanian authorities and the FBI, the sources said.
The Turkish government deported him to Jordan, the sources said, where local authorities and the FBI took custody of him. He was brought to the United States in the last few days, a law enforcement source said.
U.S. officials including Attorney General Eric Holder announced the indictment on Thursday, saying he would be arraigned on Friday at U.S. District Court in lower Manhattan, only blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the September 11 attacks.
Abu Ghaith becomes one of the highest-ranking al Qaeda figures to be brought to the United States for civilian trial. When Holder previously announced plans to try defendants in the September 11 attacks in the same courthouse, he was forced to back down by public opposition, and the trials were moved to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
New York police were less concerned Abu Ghaith's case would present a security problem than they were about the trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others charged with plotting the attacks, a law enforcement source said.
"It's not the same. It doesn't rise to that level," said the source, who is familiar with the department's views and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The indictment accused Abu Ghaith of acting in a conspiracy that "would and did murder United States nationals anywhere in the world," listing actions before and after September 11, 2001.
"Among other things, Abu Ghaith urged others to swear allegiance to bin Laden, spoke on behalf of and in support of al Qaeda's mission, and warned that attacks similar to those of September 11, 2001 would continue," the indictment said.
<p>It cited a May 2001 gathering at a house in Kandahar, Afghanistan, alleging Abu Ghaith urged guests to swear allegiance to bin Laden, and it says bin Laden summoned Abu Ghaith on the evening of September 11, requesting his assistance.
Bin Laden and Abu Ghaith appeared together the next morning, when the defendant warned the United States and its allies that a "great army is gathering against you" and that "the nation of Islam" would do battle against "the Jews, the Christians and the Americans," the indictment alleges.
FIRST WORD FROM CONGRESSMAN
Initial public confirmation of Abu Ghaith's capture came from Representative Peter King, a senior Republican member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee and former chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
"I commend our CIA and FBI, our allies in Jordan, and President (Barack) Obama for their capture of al-Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. I trust he received a vigorous interrogation, and will face swift and certain justice," King said in a statement.
U.S. sources indicated that, while a CIA role in the capture of Abu Ghaith could not be ruled out, the FBI took the lead role in the operation under the auspices of an interagency body known as the High-value Detainee Interrogation Group.
The group was created by Obama's administration after the president ordered the shutdown of a CIA program in which militant suspects were detained and held in a network of secret prisons during the administration of President George W. Bush.
The suspects were sometimes subjected to controversial and physically coercive "enhanced interrogation techniques," and also were sometimes transferred without trial to third countries under a procedure known as "extraordinary rendition."
Records compiled by a United Nations sanctions committee show Abu Ghaith was born in Kuwait in 1965.
After the September 11 attacks, Abu Ghaith first surfaced as one of al Qaeda's main spokesmen. Later, U.S. officials believe he was part of a group of top al Qaeda figures that included one of bin Laden's sons, Saad, who allegedly traveled to Iran, where the Iranian government said they were being held "in custody."
The Long War Journal, a counterterrorism blog published by the conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, reported in 2010 that Abu Ghaith had been released by Iranian authorities and supposedly had returned to Afghanistan.
(Editing by Warren Strobel and Cynthia Osterman)

http://news.yahoo.com/bin-laden-son-law-held-jordan-operation-involving-174218862.html

he was willing to drone U.S citizens yet not this guy???

It's very plain to see what side obama is on....and it's not Ours!!!!