There’s no hint of the dramatic story unfolding beyond the building’s
gilded entrance, which on this day is a portal into a dark and
momentous history whose climax took place only a few blocks away. Asked
if they’re aware of what’s going on inside, most people shake their
heads. The same is true of the NYPD police officer who slouches
nonchalantly against the passenger door of his car, who also answers
that he doesn’t know. What is happening? he asks.
What is happening is the ongoing civil trial of the most senior
adviser to Osama bin Laden since the Sept. 11 attacks. Reputedly at the
late bin Laden’s request, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, 48, became the voice of
al Qaeda in the months leading up to 9/11, though few would have
recognized him until after American Airlines Flight 11 and United
Airlines flight 175 few into the Twin Towers. After that fateful day, al
Qaeda, in the eyes of the world, had arrived. Abu Ghaith’s mandate,
according to prosecutors, was simple: to terrorize the West with words
and recruit the next generation of al Qaeda fighters.
A man identified as Suleiman Abu
Ghaith appears in this still image taken from an undated video address.
The son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who served as al Qaeda's spokesman has
been arrested and detained in Jordan in an operation led by Jordanian
authorities and the FBI, U.S. government sources said on Thursday. The
sources said Abu Ghaith, a militant who had appeared in videos
representing al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, attacks on New York and
Washington in 2001, had initially been picked up in Turkey.
REUTERS/Handout
Abu Ghaith can be seen in videos saying Americans were ultimately
responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and urging Muslims to fight “Jews,
Americans and their allies” in powerful sermons that were transmitted
around the world. Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown
University, said in a Washington Post article on March 7 that Abu Ghaith
was “the vortex of al Qaeda’s operations at arguably the most important
time in the movement’s history.”
Few would have expected that Abu Ghaith would one day sit in a
courtroom just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. The attack
is the most traumatic event in the city’s history, yet even at the site
itself -- which has become a major New York tourist destination, with
vendors hawking postcards of the Twin Towers, few people are aware that
the voice of the most feared terrorist organization in the world, who,
in the aftermath of 9/11, raged that the attacks on America “shall not
stop,” is on trial in the very city where the attacks began.
The reasons have to do with the forward momentum of a dynamic city
like New York, with Americans’ willingness to abdicate responsibility to
their government for pursuing, capturing and punishing its attackers,
and with time and emotional fatigue.
Still, the courthouse is only a few blocks from the scene of the crime.
Just over a year ago, Abu Ghaith was captured by CIA operatives while
getting off a flight in Jordan on his way from Afghanistan to visit
family in Kuwait. Jordanian officials handed him over to U.S.
authorities, and within days he was in custody in a federal prison in
New York.
In announcing the arrest last March, Attorney General Eric Holder
asserted, “No amount of distance or time will weaken our resolve to
bring America's enemies to justice. To violent extremists who threaten
the American people and seek to undermine our way of life, this arrest
sends an unmistakable message:
There is no corner of the world where you
can escape from justice, because we will do everything in our power to
hold you accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
It was a year before Abu Ghaith went to trial.
The second tower of the World Trade
Center bursts into flames after being hit by a hijacked airplane in New
York September 11, 2001.
REUTERS/Sara K. Schwittek
The trial commenced on March 5 with little fanfare. Among the
resulting news articles, many seemed unclear about the charges; often,
in headlines, Abu Ghaith was (and in some cases still is) reported as
being on trial for helping plan 9/11. Sometimes it sounds like he is the
first terrorist to be tried publicly in connection with 9/11, which he
isn’t; that was Zacarias Moussaoui, who was sentenced to life in prison
in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia after
being found guilty of conspiring to kill American citizens.
Five other 9/11 conspirators have bounced between the military and
civilian court systems, though to date none of them have actually been
tried. The only other 9/11 trial took place in Hamburg, Germany, in
which Mounir El Motassadeq was sentenced to 15 years -- likely far less
than he would have received had he been convicted in the U.S.
Abu Ghaith was essentially the al Qaeda spokesman for 9/11, and he is
the closest thing New York has seen to a 9/11 terrorist on trial. The
fact that his trial is so little known is perhaps by design, said a
woman who identified herself as a documentary filmmaker but declined to
give her name. “You know that if it’s quiet, it’s been managed well. The
last thing they want is a media circus,” she said as she sat outside of
the courtroom.
But it isn’t as if the trial is taking place in secret. And New Yorkers have obviously not forgotten 9/11.
When President Obama was elected in 2008, he said, in the face of
intense pressure, that he would oversee the closure of the contoversial
U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. Six years later, not only is the prison
still open, but few people seem to really care about it anymore. Given
that blasé attitude toward what had fairly recently been a source of
widespread outrage and the object of an Obama campaign promise, it is
also possible that people just don’t care anymore about a man like Abu
Ghaith.
Yet clearly, the U.S. government does. When the indictment against
Abu Ghaith was unsealed on March 6, Preet Bharara, the current U.S.
attorney for the Southern District of New York, said: “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.”
Abu Ghaith became Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law after he married bin
Laden’s daughter Fatima, and worked for al Qaeda prior to 9/11, though
not much is known about his life before that. He worked as a teacher in
Kuwait after the government banned him from preaching at mosques for
verbally attacking the government in the wake of the first Gulf War. A
year after the 9/11 attacks, Kuwait withdrew his citizenship over his
issuance of a fatwa against American citizens. Abu Ghaith reportedly
lived under house arrest in Iran from 2003 to 2013, when he managed to
escape using a fake Saudi passport. He is not accused of planning or
executing the attacks on Sept. 11; the specific accusations against him
are for making threats against the U.S. and its citizens, primarily in
the aftermath of 9/11, and for being the head recruiter for Al-Qaeda’s
ground troops.
At his trial, not surprisingly, 9/11 is a constant presence.
United States Marshals stand guard
as lawyer Stanley Cohen (2nd L) arrives outside the Manhattan Federal
Courthouse for the Suleiman Abu Ghaith trial in the Manhattan Borough of
New York March 5, 2014. Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden,
went on trial in New York on Monday, becoming one of the highest-profile
defendants to face terrorism charges in the United States.
REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
On this particular day of the trial, as the 10 a.m. start time
approached, international news crews – mostly from the Middle East –
began appearing at the barriers in front of the courthouse. Otherwise,
the queues delineated by the barricades were empty, and there were just a
few onlookers.
After passing the pensive-looking U.S marshals out front, the media
encountered more security inside. When asked, one marshal conceded that
extra security had been assembled for this “very high-profile” case. As
the trial resumed, reporters took notes on the opening statements, but
soon the film crews waiting in the vestibule packed up their equipment
and left, and most of the reporters inside weren’t far behind.
"Osama bin Laden asked the defendent to deliver al Qaeda to the
world," said Michael Ferrara, the prosecution lawyer. "He threatened
further attacks against America and asked Muslims around the world to
pick up arms and fight America."
Ferrara said he would prove in the course of the trial that al Qaeda
was a terrorist organization and that Abu Ghaith has helped them in
their attacks. In one video, says Ferrara, Abu Ghaith is seen saying,
"When al Qaeda threatens, it delivers."
The opening statements were revealing, in different ways. The
prosecution sought to keep the focus on 9/11 and read aloud comments
from the videos released by Abu Ghaith on behalf of al Qaeda. “The
storms shall not stop, especially the airplanes storm,” read Ferrara,
from a speech Abu Ghaith made in the wake of 9/11.
The government contends that Abu Ghaith went to training camps all
over Afghanistan and recruited bombers, that he instilled hatred and
encouraged violence against America and its citizens. They say he was
the voice of al Qaeda.
A few moments after the opening remarks by the assistant U.S.
attorney, the judge cleared his throat, reminded one juror to stay awake
and then summoned the defense lawyer, Stanley Cohen, to make his
opening statement. Cohen stood up and made his way over to the jury. He
introduced himself and said: “Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve just been to
the movies.”
The defense for Abu Ghaith was simple. Cohen reminded the jury that
this was not about 9/11, not about the USS Cole or any embassy bombings
that have taken place. “After 13 years, this is about words and
associations,” Cohen said. The basic facts that were established, he
said, was that Abu Ghaith had killed no one and that the prosecution had
set out to substitute “evidence for fear.”
Cohen then set about dismantling the prosecution’s two main
witnesses, saying they were the only real terrorists who will be heard
in the courtroom and that their words against Abu Ghaith were being
heard only because they cut a deal to avoid a long sentence.
But then Cohen, who has a long bushy beard and a greying mane of hair
that’s pulled into a ponytail, began describing his own cinematically
themed story for the jury.
He started out by describing the story of Captain Thomas Preston, a
regimental officer at the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. After the
massacre, Preston was accused of murder along with eight of his troops.
Such was the dislike of the British at that time that no lawyer would
take the case. Preston requested the assistance of John Adams, who would
later go on to become the second president of the United States.
It was clear what Cohen’s point was. He was trying to ensure a fair
trial for Abu Ghaith and was pleading with the jury, through his story
about Preston, that they should separate the trial from the events of
9/11 and the hatred they may feel for al Qaeda, in the same way Adams
had asked the jury in 1770 to forget that the soldiers were British.
All John Adams had to do was prove that it was not Preston who
shouted “fire” on the day of the massacre. Cohen said that throughout
his time in Boston, Preston was accused of saying many nasty things
against the patriots, but, ultimately, as was eventually proven in
court, he was not the man who shouted “fire” on the day. As Cohen put it
in the Manhattan court, Abu Ghaith, despite his nasty words about
America and its citizens, was not the man who shouted “fire” during 9/11
or any other terrorist-related event. The acquittal of Preston and six
of his fellow soldiers, much to the disbelief of those living in Boston
at that time, was one of Adams’ proudest moments and a victory that
prompted his famous quote that Cohen repeated in court: "Facts are
stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or
the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and
evidence."
The cinematic touches seemed dated, as if the scenes were outtakes
from a circa 2005 blockbuster drama. Abu Ghaith sat upright with a
determined look on his face, and despite having spent a year in a New
York prison, he appeared to be in a confident mood, something his lawyer
confirmed to IBTimes outside of the court during a brief interview.
“He’s a strong man with a strong belief system,” Cohen said, standing
on the courthouse steps. Notably, there was no one else around to argue
otherwise.
The trial is expected to finish by the end of March.
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