By Jane Sutton GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's accused media chief incited murder and inspired al Qaeda suicide attackers, including two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, a U.S. military prosecutor told the Guantanamo war crimes court on Friday. "You are a terrorist and a war criminal," the prosecutor, Army Maj. Dan Cowhig, told defendant Ali Hamza al Bahlul. A jury of nine U.S. military officers began deliberating on Friday in the second terrorism trial at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At least six must agree in order to convict Bahlul of conspiring with al Qaeda to attack civilians, soliciting murder and giving material support for terrorism. The Yemeni defendant and his U.S. military lawyer sat in silent protest throughout the trial but Bahlul's earlier words to Guantanamo interrogators formed key evidence against him. The interrogators testified that Bahlul scripted the videotaped wills of two Sept. 11 hijackers who were his roommates in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1999. "He whispers in the ear of Mohamed Atta and Ziad al Jarrah," Cowhig said. "He motivated them to shred themselves and hundreds of others in the towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the fields of Pennsylvania." Bahlul boasted that bin Laden assigned him to make a recruiting video and was so pleased with it that he promoted him to media secretary, the interrogators testified. Bahlul's fingerprints were all over a stash of books that U.S. soldiers found in Afghanistan, including a journal filled with bin Laden's dictation and a notebook full of production notes for the video titled "The Destruction of the American Destroyer USS Cole," prosecution witnesses said. The two-hour piece catalogues Muslim humiliations around the world. A segment labeled "The Solution" celebrates the suicide bombers who drove a boat full of explosives into the USS Cole in 2000, killing 17 American sailors. Cowhig called the video, released in early 2001, a recruiting tool for al Qaeda suicide bombers. Bahlul, who could face life in prison, is not accused of direct involvement in or advanced knowledge of any attacks. But prosecutors say he incited others to attack civilians through the release of his video on the Internet and DVDs. "The exploitation of modern media and the exploitation of modern technology has made terrorism more effective but it has not made it new," Cowhig said. "This is not a new kind of war. This is barbarity." IN HIDING Bahlul went into hiding with bin Laden shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, driving a minivan full of video gear and computers with a satellite uplink, interrogators testified. Prosecution witnesses said Bahlul's video was translated into several languages and cited admiringly in wiretapped conversations among terrorism suspects. Stacks of copies were found in a Pakistani guest house where alleged Sept. 11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh was captured in 2002, an FBI agent testified. "If it is not the most popular al Qaeda video of all time it is among the top five," terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann testified. Bahlul was not allowed to act as his own attorney in the Guantanamo court he once called a farce, and his military lawyer honored his request not to put on any defense. He is one of 255 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban captives held at Guantanamo, and only the second to face trial in the special tribunals created by the Bush administration to try foreign suspects on terrorism charges outside the regular civilian and military courts. (Editing by Tom Brown and Alan Elsner)
Afghan policemen and firefighters work at the scene after a suicide attack in Kabul October 30, 2008. An explosion in a crowded area outside Afghanistan's information ministry in the heart of ...
