Convicted Al-Qaeda Operative Still Bloodthirsty
The Miami Herald sent a reporter to Gitmo for the trial, and you can see the difference in the depth of the reporting from the majority of the big outlets that are just reprinting the AP version.
Bin Laden cohort defiant after getting life sentence
A military jury convicted Osama bin Laden’s media secretary of three war crimes charges then condemned the terrorist to serve life in prison; he responded with defiance.GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — A military jury Monday convicted Osama bin Laden’s media secretary of war crimes for creating an al Qaeda recruiting video that prosecutors argued incited suicide bombers. Within hours, the jury ordered him to serve life in prison.
The convict, Ali Hamza al Bahlul, about 40, responded by breaking his week-long boycott of the trial with a 50-minute anti-American monologue.
He declared his devotion to Allah, berated the United States for the plight of the Palestinians and, noting his election-eve conviction, announced that radical Islam’s war with the West would persist with whoever succeeds President Bush.
”We have fought and we fight and will fight any government that governs America,” said Bahlul. He waved a poem he wrote in Arabic in praise of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The Storm of the Airplanes, and said he had volunteered for that suicide mission.
Until he was convicted, the Yemeni father of four had declined to mount a defense and sat silently, occasionally smiling at the mention of his handiwork.
The jury of nine Navy captains and colonels from the Army, Air Force and Marines had taken only four hours to find him guilty of the 23-count charge sheet.
Their deliberations on the sentence lasted only 45 minutes, less time than the prisoner in tan jumpsuit and sneakers took to rail at them.
No one testified during the no-contest trial that Bahlul, from Yemen’s Red Sea region, ever fired a shot at Americans during his 1999-2001 tenure in Afghanistan.
Nor was there evidence that any of the 9/11 hijackers saw his video, The Destruction of the American Destroyer USS Cole.
SUPPORTED TERROR
But the Pentagon argued that Bahlul conspired with al Qaeda, supported terror and solicited murder by creating the two-hour video that spliced fiery bin Laden speeches with Muslim bloodshed and stock news footage of the aftermath of the 2000 suicide bombing of the $1 billion warship.
In all, prosecutors called 16 witnesses — three former jihadists, prison camp interrogators, forensic experts and two victims of the USS Cole attack, notably the father of one of the 17 sailors killed on Oct. 12, 2000, off the coast of Yemen.
Two men came up alongside the Cole in a vessel packed with explosives in Aden harbor, waved, then detonated themselves and their load.
”Our son and his 16 mates were minding their own business, refueling in a supposedly friendly harbor and weren’t out to hurt anybody and were viciously attacked and murdered,” said Gary Swenchonis Sr., his hands shaking and voice trembling after using a cane to reach the tribunal’s witness stand.
His son, Gary Jr., 26, was a Navy petty officer and firefighter. The father said the video was especially troubling because it promoted ”propaganda, hate, violence” — values his family abhored.
”He was raised, in short, to respect all people of religious beliefs and that violence was wrong,” Swenchonis said.
“If you had to go to war, you went to war for your nation — and you wore a uniform.”
The Yemeni watched expressionless.
In seeking the maximum life sentence, the lead prosecutor, Army Maj. Dan Cowhig, called Bahlul’s video “a virus that this man had released on the world.”
Swenchonis’ father said all you have to do is surf the web to see it.
‘The message that video sends every time it is played is blood, blood, destruction, destruction,’ ” said the prosecutor, asking the jury to sentence Bahlul to life imprisonment.
”You can send another message every time this video is played,” he said: “The maker of this message will make no more.”
Bahlul became only the second detainee among the 255 here ever convicted of war crimes before the special terror court Bush ordered set up after the 9/11 attacks.
CONVICT’S CORRIDOR
He will now join bin Laden’s driver in a convict’s corridor at the prison camps.
The driver, Salim Hamdan, also of Yemen, was convicted of supporting terror in August.
A different jury sentenced him to time served plus the rest of 2008 in prison.
In contrast to Hamdan’s clear contrition, Bahlul has for years rejected the authority of the U.S. military to judge him, and adopted a self-styled boycott.
The jury declined to discuss the case or their deliberations with reporters who had covered the trial. Six of the nine jurors had sentenced al Qaeda foot soldier David Hicks of Australia to the maximum in an earlier plea agreement.
Update: Three Gitmo detainees returned including one to Somolialand, none of the 100 Yemenis to Yemen although dozens have been cleared for release. Concerns about security and torture remain.
Miami Herald: It noted that the U.S. government has transferred more than 520 former Guantánamo captives to 30 nations — from Albania to Yemen — but did not explain that Somaliland has a different status. It’s not an independent state but a self-proclaimed autonomous region of northwestern Somalia.
Somaliland declared its independence from Somalia in 1991, and by some accounts has served as a U.S. ally in the Horn of Africa in the fight against Islamic militants in Somalia, to its south. The Bush administration has said it is leaving to the African Union any decision on recognition.
