Guantanamo jury sentences al Qaida video-maker to life
February 2, 2009 by SAF Desk
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — A military jury Monday convicted Osama bin Laden’s media secretary of war crimes for creating an al Qaeda recruiting video that prosecutors argued incited suicide bombers. Within hours, the jury sentenced him to life in prison.
The convict, Ali Hamza al Bahlul, about 40, responded by breaking his week-long boycott of the trial with a 50-minute anti-American monologue.
He declared his devotion to Allah, berated the United States for the plight of the Palestinians and, noting his election-eve conviction, announced that radical Islam’s war with the West would persist with whoever succeeds President Bush.
”We have fought and we fight and will fight any government that governs America,” said Bahlul. He waved a poem he wrote in Arabic in praise of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, The Storm of the Airplanes.
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