Bin Laden son-in-law faces 9/11 charges
Republicans decry decision to bring charges in U.S. court.
The senior al-Qaida official, who was captured in Jordan recently, will appear Friday in federal court in New York.
WASHINGTON — A senior al-Qaida leader and member of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle was charged Thursday with conspiring to kill Americans in his role as the terror network’s top propagandist who lauded the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — and warned there would be more.
Officials said Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who was born in Kuwait and was bin Laden’s son-in-law, was captured in Jordan in the past week. He will appear Friday in U.S. federal court in New York, according to a Justice Department statement and indictment outlining the accusations against Abu Ghaith.
“No amount of distance or time will weaken our resolve to bring America’s enemies to justice,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in the statement.
The case marks a legal victory for the Obama administration, which has long sought to charge senior al-Qaida suspects in American federal courts instead of holding them at the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But it immediately sparked an outcry from Republicans in Congress who do not want highthreat terror suspects brought into the United States.
“If this man, the spokesman of 9/11, isn’t an enemy combatant, who is?” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters. Abu Ghaith “should be going to Gitmo. He should be kept there and questioned.”
The Justice Department said Abu Ghaith was the spokesman for al-Qaida, working alongside bin Laden and current leader Ayman al-Zawahri, since at least May 2001. Abu Ghaith is a former mosque preacher and teacher who urged followers that month to swear allegiance to bin Laden, prosecutors said.
The day after the 9/11 attacks, prosecutors say, he appeared with bin Laden and al-Zawahri and called on the “nation of Islam” to battle against Jews, Christians and Americans.
A “great army is gathering against you,” Abu Ghaith said on Sept. 12, 2001, according to prosecutors.
Abu Ghaith’s trial will mark one of the first prosecutions of senior al- Qaida leaders on U.S. soil. Charging foreign terror suspects in American federal courts was a top pledge by President Barack Obama shortly after he took office in 2009. Obama had vowed to close Guantanamo Bay.
Republicans have fought the White House to keep Guantanamo open. Several GOP lawmakers on Thursday said Abu Ghaith should be considered an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo, where he could be questioned more thoroughly than his lawyers likely will allow as a federal defendant on U.S. soil.