Terror trial openings describe al Qaeda world

[babylonsister]

Terror trial openings describe al Qaeda world


By Carol Rosenberg | The Miami Herald


GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — The U.S. government opened its first war crimes prosecution Tuesday with a narrative of Osama bin Laden's driver overhearing his boss offer an eerie post-mortem in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks:

''If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane, it would've hit the dome,'' declared Navy Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Stone.

And so with his first words to a military jury, the Pentagon prosecutor conjured up a conversation from inside the world of al Qaeda, revealed by the accused, driver Salim Hamdan. Bin Laden told his deputy, Ayman al Zawahari, that U.S. forces — not heroic passengers — brought down United Airlines Flight 93 in a Pennsylvania field on 9/11 before terrorist hijackers could slam it into ''the dome,'' of the Capitol building.

Hamdan, 37, of Yemen is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terror for allegedly serving as the al Qaeda godfather's driver, sometime bodyguard and weapons courier.

Prosecutors put him at the heart of the conspiracy — driving bin Laden to a meeting with some of the 9/11 co-conspirators, to an al Jazeera interview, to a Ramadan feast at a paramilitary training camp to "further recruit and indoctrinate young individuals for their organization.''

Defense attorneys cast him as a nobody, an orphan who left the poverty of Yemen for Afghanistan and became bin Laden's $200-a-month driver because "he had to earn a living, not because he had a jihad against America.''

Moreover, the defense contends that Hamdan offered to help the United States while in Afghanistan.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/45106.html

[librechik]

1. One of the detainees blamed Cheney for shooting down Flt 93?

Of course we have to believe him so we can save thousands of lives!

Damn, the intelligence we get from enhanced interrogations is good!

[madeline_con]

3. I thought it was common knowledge.

The warm fuzzies from the "heroic passengers" story played better in the press. Protecting the W.H. really is paramount, even if innocent lives are lost. That's just life in the old U.S. of A.

[TahitiNut]

4. It must be true ....

... since coerced hearsay from a conversation of folks with a ringside seat to Flight 93 on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, using the most sophisticated communications technology, certainly know far more than the people in our own state and federal governments with time left over from monitoring the communications of such Americans as competing businessmen and Democratic politicians.

Or something like that. :dunce:

[maddezmom]

2. FBI Says Hamdan Aided bin Laden Search

FBI Says Hamdan Aided bin Laden Search
July 17, 2008
Associated Press

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Salim Hamdan, a one-time driver for Osama bin Laden, helped the FBI try to track down the terrorist leader after being captured in Afghanistan, Hamdan's former interrogators testified July 16.

Hamdan led agents to the al-Qaida chief's compounds in Kandahar and mapped out his movements among safehouses, training camps and other remote corners of Afghanistan in the month following the Sept. 11 attacks, FBI special agent Robert Fuller said at a pretrial hearing.

The U.S. military is now preparing to use the interrogations against Hamdan at the first American war-crimes trial since World War II. The Yemeni prisoner faces a maximum life sentence if convicted of conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

Hamdan's Pentagon-appointed attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, said the U.S. is not sufficiently taking into account the help that Hamdan provided following his capture.

more:http://www.military.com/cs/Satellite?c=maArticle&cid=1199420512827&pagename=News%2FnwsLayout

[librechik]

5. Which is why Bin Laden is now incarcerated at Supermax right next to Ramzi Joseph!

wait...