Don’t let 9/11 boss testify, U.S. urges

NEW YORK - Prosecutors on Monday tried to stop the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks from providing testimony at the terrorism trial of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law.

The government submitted written arguments asking U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to exclude the words of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed from Sulaiman Abu Ghaith’s trial.

Abu Ghaith is on trial on charges he conspired to kill Americans and aided al-Qaida as the terror group’s spokesman after 9/11. The 48-year-old onetime imam at a Kuwaiti mosque was extradited to New York from Turkey last year.

Prosecutors said defense lawyers should be blocked from calling Mohammed as a witness through live, closed-circuit video from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he is imprisoned.

They cite the late request - the defense began its presentation by calling two FBI agents as witnesses on Monday - and the fact that Mohammed has insisted he willnot testify. The judge scheduled arguments on the issue for this morning.

The defense asked to use Mohammed as a witness after reviewing a 14-page statement Mohammed provided in response to 451 questions posed by Abu Ghaith’s lawyers.

In it, Mohammed wrote that he wanted to help Abu Ghaith but was distrustful of the source of the questions posed to him, saying they reminded him of interrogations he underwent after his 2003 capture.

He said Abu Ghaith didnot play any military role in al-Qaida, a statement supporting defense arguments that he did not know about pending al-Qaida attacks when he warned on a widely circulated video after Sept. 11, 2001, that “the storm of airplanes will not abate.”

However, Mohammed also seemed to support the government’s argument that Abu Ghaith played a key role in al-Qaida, saying fighting one of the world’s superpowers meant “we would have to resort to a long war of attrition to which the military and media alike contribute.”

Front Section, Pages 5 on 03/18/2014

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