Guantanamo trial to showcase gadgetry, spy-plane imagery

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — An Army prosecutor on Tuesday described an alleged al-Qaida propagandist as being at the heart of the Afghan-based terror group by early 2000, a time when Osama bin Laden had decided to spread his message through media and mayhem.

The accused, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, listened intently as the prosecutor outlined plans for a weeklong trial showcasing spy-plane imagery, video gadgetry, prison camp confessions, intercepted letters and testimony from convicted terrorists.

Al-Bahlul, about 40, is charged with three war crimes for working as bin Laden's media secretary after he moved from his native Yemen to Afghanistan in February 1999 until his capture in the U.S. invasion in late 2001. Conviction could carry at most life in prison.

"In Afghanistan, the accused served as the media man for Osama bin Laden and other members of the organization," prosecutor Army Maj. Dan Cowhig said, noting that al-Bahlul was also sometimes confused for bin Laden's bodyguard because he carried a rifle and grenades along with the boss' laptop computer.

In essence, the prosecutor said, al-Bahlul's role was "to launch propaganda for al-Qaida," to create a video that made "a political argument, an indoctrination, a solicitation."

That movie, he said, includes a chapter called "The Destruction of the American Destroyer USS Cole" — which splices special effects, tales of suicide bombings, bin Laden speeches celebrating jihad and al-Qaida forces in training.

Seventeen American sailors died aboard the USS Cole in the October 2000 suicide bombing. Two men in a small explosives-laden vessel pulled up alongside the Cole while it was on a refueling stop in the southern Yemeni port of Aden, and detonated their load — crippling the $1 billion warship.

Prosecutors cast al-Bahlul's role in making that film in particular as the smoking-gun evidence in their conspiracy case, which alleges he solicited the murder of protected people and provided material support for terror.

Throughout out it all, the 5-foot-3Yemeni with a tidy beard wearing prison camp sneakers and tan uniform sat in stony silence, sticking to a boycott he imposed on himself and his Pentagon-appointed attorney.

The defense lawyer offered no opening argument. Nor did he question witnesses, in keeping with al-Bahlul's instructions.

Al-Bahlul never donned a headset offering English-to-Arabic translation. But he appeared to understand and follow, as the prosecutor outlined the weeklong case to the nine-officer jury of colonels and Navy captains.

His court-appointed lawyer, Air Force Reserve Maj. David Frakt, says al-Bahlul rejects the authority of the war court, doesn't consider his activities war crimes and never was an "operational combatant."

Evidence being admitted for the trial include al-Bahlul's own notebooks and his prison camp confessions.

The government is also bringing three federal convicts from the Lackawanna 6, American Arabs who confessed to becoming al-Qaida recruits in U.S. plea bargains.

In particular, Cowhig said, the propaganda al-Bahlul created was designed to overcome a devout Muslim's reluctance to become a suicide bomber, by celebrating their martyrdom. Suicide is a sin in mainstream Islam. Moreover, the prosecutor claimed, the video he produced rationalized Muslim on Muslim violence — so long as it's aimed at people whom bin Laden declared apostates.

Cowhig never asserted that al-Bahlul knew the intimate details of the 9/11 attacks before they unfolded. But he did quote him as saying, afterward, that he envied those who had major roles in it.

On Sept. 11, 2001, he said, al-Bahlul was in the company of the al-Qaida boss in a remote region of Afghanistan, near Tora Bora, where bin Laden gave him an important mission: Hook up a satellite receiver to watch the events a half a world away — in New York and Washington and, as it happened, in rural Pennsylvania.

Al-Bahlul failed. The contours of the terrain did not cooperate, according to the prosecutor's account, and all he could conjure up was the audio through which the group "followed the 9/11 attacks as they unfolded."

The first witness to testify was an FBI fingerprint expert, Dee J. Fife, from the crime lab in Quantico, Va., who explained that he matched al-Bahlul's prints to a series of notebooks and documents. Fife came to Guantanamo to take fresh fingerprints earlier this month, and testified that he overheard a guard offering the accused a chance to watch a video afterward.

"He said he was only interested in watching videos of Sept. 11," the FBI expert said.