Bin Laden propagandist's video of Cole bombing shown at Guantanamo

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — Osama bin Laden's media secretary joined military jurors Wednesday watching his handiwork — a crude two-hour recruiting video that spliced gory Muslim suffering with exhortations to holy war, offered to prove the filmmaker committed war crimes.

Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, about 40, was rapt during the screening of his film in the third day of his military commission trial. Pentagon prosecutors consider it a key al-Qaida tool of incitement created after the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole.

Unlike his stony indifference in the earlier portions of his trial, the slight Yemeni in a tan prison camp uniform sometimes smiled and nodded during the graphic film, 'he Destruction of the American Destroyer USS Cole."

The Pentagon alleges al-Bahlul committed three war crimes during his two-year tenure at al-Qaida's public relations shop: conspiracy, solicitation to murder and providing material support for terror. Conviction can carry a maximum of life in prison.

"It's a powerful video if you have a lack of historical knowledge," said former FBI agent Ali Soufan, to whom al-Bahlul boasted during a 2002 interrogation that he produced the film.

Soufan, an Arab American, summed up its message as this: "Go to Afghanistan. Join al-Qaida. Join martyrdom operations. Hate life. Love death."

During their talks, said Soufan, a fluent Arabic speaker, al-Bahlul explained that he joined the jihad, or holy war, because the U.S. and Jews had troops on holy Muslim soil, and U.S. policy had led to the deaths of Muslim women and children.

"He does not consider anyone protected persons, or civilians," he said. "Even if Muslims are in charge in America. He makes no distinction whatsoever. As long as you are American, as long as you pay taxes, you are a target."

Al-Bahlul was captured in Afghanistan early in the U.S. invasion following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and was among captives taken to Guantanamo in January 2002.

No evidence has been offered that he fired a shot, or knew intimate details in advance of the al-Qaida suicide attacks. Al-Bahlul has forbidden his Pentagon appointed attorney to offer an argument, or question witnesses, under a self-styled boycott.

In interrogations, the Yemeni described himself as an al-Qaida public affairs officer.

At one point, he allegedly helped two of the 9-11 hijackers prepare their martyrs wills.

Then, after the Sept. 11 attacks, he prepared talking points for bin Laden on the impact to the American economy for press interviews. He videotaped the boss delivering a speech at an al-Qaida training camp.

He also jotted down recruits' queries to bin Laden then analyzed the queries in what one prosecutor, Army Maj. Dan Cowhig, called "market research."

Prosecutors argue that al-Bahlul's activities amounted to war crimes because his propaganda both recruited al-Qaida volunteers via the Internet and instilled in viewers a passion for martyrdom.

Al-Bahlul told his interrogators that he created the video on a laptop while the al-Qaida inner circle was on the run inside Afghanistan, to elude American reprisal for the October 12, 2000, bombing of the USS Cole.

The film itself is ostensibly a justification for the suicide attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors off the coast of Aden, Yemen. It splices special effects, speeches and news footage of the aftermath of the attack.

But in scope it offers a historical sweep of what bin Laden cast as Muslim humiliation: Saudi King Fahd accepting a medal that looks like a crusader's cross from the Queen of England. President Bill Clinton presiding over Arab-Israeli peace talks. Plus images of women and children killed by bullets and airstrikes from Iraq to Gaza, and from Chechnya to Kashmir.

Much of the footage is familiar to TV viewers in the Middle East — Egyptian fundamentalists on trial in cages, a Palestinian boy named Mohammed Dura shaking in horror beside his slain father's body in a Gaza alley, bloody women and children being pulled from airstrike rubble.

Al-Bahlul watched intently as his work was displayed on more than a dozen screens around the tribunal chamber. When bin Laden spoke in the video, Bahlul leaned toward the monitor at the defendant's faux mahogany table.

He slammed his fist down — just once — during a segment showing Muslim women killed in what looked like an air assault. He nodded his head in agreement during a portion alleging that Jews defiled the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

And he grinned approvingly at the FBI agent when he explained that one segment showed bin Laden wearing a traditional Yemeni dagger of adornment.

The eight-man, one-woman jury of senior U.S. military officers mostly stared straight into the monitors before them, expressionless. Once, when the video showed a cartoon explosion of the warship, a Navy captain on the panel snapped his head toward the accused and stared.