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Bin Laden happy with 9/11 toll
23/07/2008 21:22 - (SA)
Jim Loney
Guantanamo Bay - Osama bin Laden's driver overheard the al-Qaeda leader saying he was happy about the death toll in the September 11 attacks.
The evidence by Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent, was meant to support the case by prosecutors at the Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunal that the driver, Salim Hamdan, was close to al-Qaeda's leadership.
Hamdan, a Yemeni father of two with a fourth-grade education, is the first Guantanamo prisoner to face trial before the controversial tribunal at the remote base on Cuba. He faces life in prison if convicted.
"Bin Laden was happy about the results and he (Hamdan) heard bin Laden say he didn't expect the operation to be that successful," said Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent. "He only thought 1 000 to 1 500 people would perish so he was happy with the results."
Soufan also said Hamdan told him about a conversation he overheard when he was driving bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, after the attacks that killed nearly 3 000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Marriage advice
The two men were looking at a magazine which described the flight routes of the 9/11 hijacked planes, Soufan said.
"If they didn't shoot that fourth plane it would have hit the dome," Soufan said bin Laden told Zawahiri, according to Hamdan's account.
"I assumed ('the dome' meant) either Congress or the White House," Soufan said. "Hamdan said he did not know what they mean by the dome."
Describing the relationship between the driver and the al-Qaeda leader, Soufan said bin Laden had given Hamdan some marriage advice, suggesting he go back to Yemen and find a woman from a "pious religious family," and when Hamdan returned with a wife, bin Laden held a feast in celebration.
"It shows a close relationship, an affinity," he said.
Prosecutors have portrayed Hamdan as a driver and bodyguard for the fugitive al-Qaeda leader who had access to the Islamic militant group's inner circle. Defence lawyers say he was just a hired hand in the motor pool who never joined the terrorist group.
Spoke highly of 9/11 hijackers
On the third day of trial, Soufan, a prosecution witness who interrogated Hamdan, said bin Laden knew the 9/11 hijackers and spoke highly of them.
"He praised them and their courage and he asked God to accept them as martyrs," Soufan told the six-member jury.
Prosecutors showed jurors a series of videos and pictures. Soufan identified bin Laden and Hamdan standing together.
In one, Hamdan was carrying a machine gun.
"Who gets to be that close to Osama bin Laden?" prosecutor John Murphy asked.
"People he trusts ... with his life, it appears," Soufan said.
- Reuters
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