An image from a video showing Suleiman Abu Ghaith seated left of Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden's son-in-law was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for acting as al Qaeda's spokesman after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
This comes after a Manhattan federal jury in March found the Kuwaiti-born 48-year-old guilty of conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to provide material support for terrorists and providing such support.
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was the highest-ranking al Qaeda figure to face trial on U.S. soil since the attacks. The Kuwaiti cleric became the voice of al Qaeda recruitment videos after the 2001 attacks. He testified at trial that his role was strictly religious.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan imposed the sentence on Tuesday, a few minutes after Abu Ghaith delivered a statement in Arabic, quoting the Quran and declaring that he would not ask for mercy from anyone but God.
"Today, at the same moment when you are shackling my hands and intend to bury me alive, you are at the same time unleashing the hands of hundreds of Muslim youths," Abu Ghaith said through an interpreter. "And they will join the rally of the free man."
In response, Kaplan noted that Abu Ghaith had expressed no remorse for his actions and cited a video in which Abu Ghaith appeared amused by al-Qaeda's attacks on September 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States.
Abu Ghaith was convicted in March on conspiracy charges that he answered Osama bin Laden's request in the hours after the attacks to speak on the widely circulated videos used to recruit new followers willing to go on suicide missions like the 19 who hijacked four commercial jets on Sept. 11.
"The storm of airplanes will not stop," the Kuwaiti imam warned in an October 2001 video that was played for the jury.
Jurors also saw frames of a video made Sept. 12, 2001, in which Abu Ghaith was seated next to bin Laden and two other top al Qaeda leaders as they tried to justify the attacks.
Taking the witness stand in his own defense, Abu Ghaith calmly denied he was an al Qaeda recruiter and claimed his role was a religious one aimed at encouraging all Muslims to rise up against their oppressors. He insisted he agreed to meet with bin Laden in a cave on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, out of respect for bin Laden's standing as a sheik.
"I didn't go to meet with him to bless if he had killed hundreds of Americans or not. I went to meet with him to know what he wanted," Abu Ghaith said.
When bin Laden asked what he thought would happen after the terror attacks on the U.S., Abu Ghaith testified that he responded by predicting America "will not settle until it kills you and topples the state of the Taliban."
Bin Laden responded: "You're being too pessimistic," Abu Ghaith recalled.
The Kuwaiti-born defendant was flown to the United States a year ago from Jordan, where he was captured as he headed to Kuwait, which had revoked his citizenship after 9/11.
The CIA's Bin Laden group was able to track Abu Ghaith's movements to a luxury hotel in downtown Ankara. Abu Ghaith hoped to get help from the al Qaeda network to move to another country, but the CIA was working with the MIT, Turkey's national intelligence service, and they arrested Abu Ghaith.
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