Osama bin Laden's son-in-law was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday in New York following his conviction on terrorism charges, the Associated Press reported. In March, a Manhattan federal jury found the Kuwaiti-born 48-year-old guilty of conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to provide material support for terrorists and providing such support, after a trial that offered a rare glimpse of bin Laden in the hours following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Minutes after a seemingly unrepentant Suleiman Abu Ghaith made a statement in Arabic, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan imposed the sentence on Tuesday morning.
"Today, and at the same moment where you are shackling my hands and intend to bury me alive, you are at the same time unleashing the hands of hundreds of Muslim youths," the former imam said through an interpreter. "And you are removing the dust of their minds, and they will join the rally of the free men."
In response, Kaplan noted Abu Ghaith had expressed no remorse, and cited a video in which Abu Ghaith appeared amused by al Qaeda's Sept. 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States.
"You, sir, in my assessment, are committed to doing everything you can to assist al Qaeda in its mission to kill Americans," Kaplan said.
While defense attorney Stanley Cohen asked the judge to impose a 15-year sentence, arguing that his client was guilty only of delivering fiery speeches and that there was not a "scintilla of evidence" to connect him with any specific al Qaeda plots, a prosecutor called for life in prison, the Associated Press reported.
"Abu Ghaith was a terrorist who sat alongside bin Laden on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001, celebrating the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent, men, women and children the day before," prosecutors wrote.
The government also contended that one October 2001 video, in which Abu Ghaith promised the "storm of airplanes will not stop," indicated he knew beforehand of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to detonate a shoe bomb aboard a jetliner in December 2001 by Briton Richard Reid.
"Suleiman Abu Ghaith served at the very highest levels of al Qaeda," Assistant U.S. Attorney John Cronan told the court. "Abu Ghaith was a proud participant in al Qaeda's conspiracy to kill Americans. And he was someone Osama bin Laden relied on heavily," Cronan said.
Also shown repeatedly to jurors were frames of a video made Sept. 12, 2001, that showed Abu Ghaith seated next to bin Laden and two other top al Qaeda leaders as they tried to justify the attacks.
Abu Ghaith would marry bin Laden's daughter Fatima years later, a fact the jury was not permitted to hear.
