Bin Laden Kin Knew Of 'Something Big' Pre-9/11
NEW YORK (AP) -- Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and al-Qaida spokesman said he heard before the Sept. 11 attacks that "something big was going to happen" but didn't know what it was, an FBI agent testified Thursday.
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith told authorities that when he visited al-Qaida training camps in summer 2001, he gleaned something major was in the works but never learned the group had specific plans to attack the United States, Agent Michael Butsch testified at Abu Ghaith's federal trial in New York.
But in the hours after the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden summoned him and said, "`Did you see what happened?' ... and bin Laden said that he did this operation," the agent said, recounting statements the government says Abu Ghaith made on a U.S.-bound FBI jet after his capture last year.
Abu Ghaith is the highest-ranking al-Qaida figure to be tried on U.S. soil since 9/11. While he isn't accused of taking part in the Sept. 11 attacks, they have been an important element in the backdrop of the case against him.
His lawyers have sought to elicit information from professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed to bolster their case, particularly to rebut the government's claim that Abu Ghaith "must have known" in advance of al-Qaida's so-called shoe bomb airplane plots, including Richard Reid's attempt to carry one out in December 2001.
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