The Trial of Osama Bin Laden

Copyright © 2019 by Jean Sénat Fleury.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019902792

ISBN:                   Hardcover                      978-1-7960-2033-5

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Foreword

CHAPTER ONE:      WHY THE TRIAL OF OSAMA BIN LADEN?

CHAPTER TWO:     THE OPENING OF THE HEARING

First Statement Of The Prosecution

Terrorism: A World Threat

Attacks In Kenya And Tanzania

Attacks Of Khobar Tours In Saudi Arabia

Attack Against Uss Cole In Yemen

Organization Of Al-Qaeda

Motivation

Al-Qaeda Allies

A Terrorist Action

The Attack Of August 7, 1998

Laws Against Terrorism

Regional Laws

A Premeditated Crime

The Evidence

The Plans For September 11, 2001, Attacks

CHAPTER THREE:     THE ARGUMENTS OF THE DEFENSE

The Accused Admitted No Fault

Radicalization

Terrorists Are Not Only Muslims

Annual Review Of World Terrorism

Terrorism: A Universal Problem

Internal Force Involvement In The United States

The Benefit Of The Doubt On Behalf Of The Accused

CHAPTER FOUR:     THE VERDICT OF THE COURT

CHAPTER FIVE:     THE JUDICIAL BATTLE CONTINUES

The Opening Of The Trial Of Bin Laden’s Son-In-Law

In Memory

Bibliography

About The Author

Revisiting history: it is not the privilege of a few or a negotiable right poorly granted or questioned by the State. It is, first of all, a necessity. It is also the inescapable current brought by the evolutionary points of view of the successive generations. It is, at the same time, an indispensable step if one wants to keep alive the memory of the People.

—Jules Roy, The Trial of Marshal Pétain

As for the people I am accusing, I do not know them, I have never seen them, I have no rancor or hatred against them. They are for me only entities, spirits of social malfeasance. And the act I am doing here is only a revolutionary way to hasten the explosion of truth and justice.

I have only one passion, that of light, in the name of humanity that has suffered so much and who has the right to happiness. My fiery protest is only the cry of my soul. So let’s dare translate me into the Assize Court and let the investigation take place! I wait.

—Emile Zola, I accuse!

After the horrific events of 9/11, no one thought the battle between the West and radical Islamic extremists was going to be fought like a traditional war, but to the extent that we could do so, we did. We tightened our borders, hardened the targets, took off our shoes in airports and sent troops and tanks and drones and special forces to battle foes in Afghanistan and to take out bin Laden in Pakistan. We adapted our laws and intelligence services to make it easier to monitor terrorist cell, sniffing their emails, phone calls and web traffic. And in some cases, this battle against groups that have sponsored terror attacks in the past has succeeded.

—Time Life – Inside the Criminal Mind

PREFACE

W as the war waged by the United States since the 9/11 attacks in the Middle East directed in the fight against terrorism or, rather, to consolidate President Bush’s secret policy of occupying Iraq and other countries in the Gulf region with oil resources? For many scholars, the official reasons given for Operation Iraqi Freedom, which are the fight against terrorism, the democratization and pacification of Iraq, and the fight against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are all other. Experts mention other reasons behind this operation, particularly the stranglehold on oil resources, sending a direct message to Syria and Iran to threaten them in their policy contesting the US presence in the region and finally to put an end to the regime of Saddam Hussein that threatened to question the hegemony of the United States in the region.

According to former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, President Bush privately announced his desire to overthrow Saddam Hussein at his first meeting with the National Security Council in January 2001, just one week after his investiture. In his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, he spoke of his war against the axis of evil, a term for Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein represented a few months after 9/11 the primary concern of the US government, which hoped to reshape the Middle East. The elimination of Saddam could guarantee the advent of democracy in the Middle East, neutralize the corrupt allies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, and open a flank to lead a more active fight against opponents like Syria or Iran. The strategy was to eliminate Saddam while reducing and disarming the Iraqi armed forces. A large part of the close staff to the president shared this radical thesis—Richard Perle (former chairman of the Defense Advisory Council, Pentagon advisory body), Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of State for Defense), and of course, the vice president Dick Cheney all cultivated very close ties with Israel, especially with the Israeli right. Perle and Douglas Feith, number 3 in the American defense department, helped Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 to write a paper describing Saddam’s ousting as a key Israeli strategic goal in that Iraq’s future was likely to profoundly affect the strategic balance in the Middle East.

Richard Clarke, the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism in the US National Security Council from 1998 to 2003, testified on March 24, 2004, before the Independent Inquiry into the Events September 11th. This testimony was made in October 2002, two years after his resignation. Clarke had criticized President Bush for giving the overthrow of Saddam Hussein priority over the continuation of the fight against al-Qaeda. If I’m so virulent about criticizing the president of the United States, it’s because his decision to invade Iraq has greatly harmed the war on terror.

The same criticism is made by several US agencies claiming that the war in Iraq gave birth to a new generation of Islamist radicals and harmed the international fight against terrorism. The radical Islamist movement has expanded from the core of al-Qaeda and affiliated groups to a new kind of self-generated cells that are inspired by al-Qaeda leadership but have no direct link with Osama bin Laden or his main lieutenants, concludes the first assessment of international terrorism conducted by sixteen US intelligence agencies. This document, dubbed National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), emphasizes that the ideology of armed djihad has spread at an accelerated speed around the world and that the military invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, is one of the explanations.

Iraq is becoming a machine to produce terrorism, said Hans Blix, the former head of UN disarmament inspectors. George W. Bush, who wrote this war as part of the fight against terrorism, has therefore obtained the opposite result of that sought, he said. Iraq, instead of stabilizing the region, has become a source of instability in the heart of the Middle East.

By mid-August 2003, there were 139,000 Americans and 21,000 allies including 11,000 British on Iraqi territory. The presence of American troops in the country is facing the rise of terrorist attacks and the intensification of urban guerrilla warfare. Soon pockets of resistance against foreign occupation are organized. Former Baath bet executives, Sunnis who hold cities like Fallujah, Islamists of al-Qaeda, and then from 2006, the Islamic State, Shiites around the Muqtada al-Sadr Mahdi Army that controls the suburbs Shiite Baghdad and cities like Najaf or Kufa. All these groups converge their actions toward a single objective: to fight the occupying forces, particularly the Americans.

The attacks are increasing: on August 19, 2003, the UN Headquarters was targeted in Baghdad. August 29, 2003, attacks were held in the city of Najaf. The 2005 elections were marked by an intensification of violence from urban guerrillas. In 2006, a civil war broke out between Shiites and Sunnis following the attack on the Al-Askari shrine in Samarrah. The 2003 operations that led to the fall of Saddam Hussein cost $53 billion, and the war on the ground to control the opposition forces would have cost $140 billion. This war was unpopular in France, Germany, Russia. Spain left the coalition in 2004, and the UN withdrew its support.

Two years before Iraq, on October 7, 2001, US and NATO troops invaded Afghanistan. The Taliban regime collapsed two months later. In December, in Berlin, Western nations (United States, France, Germany, England …) under the UN cover, named Hamid Karzai as the head of a transitional government. After thirteen years of occupation (2001–2014), what was the balance sheet? The US military intervention in Afghanistan has the same negative result as that of March 20, 2003, in Iraq. Far from diminishing terrorist attacks in the Middle East region, it encourages the birth of other extremist groups, such as Al-Shabaab, Al-Nusra Front, Al-Mourabitoun, Abdullah Azzam Brigades, etc., who all became al-Qaeda cells. US troops invade Afghanistan in retaliation for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Hunt for bin Laden to find him, bring him to justice—this was the primary objective of the American mission. Not only had bin Laden escaped justice, but this invasion was plunging the Middle East into a period of uninterrupted wars—wars that continued for years in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. The other goal was to rebuild Afghanistan’s economy and industrial infrastructure so that the country achieved economic prosperity.

What happened to Afghanistan after the US intervention? In 2001, Mullah Mohammed Omar (Taliban leader at the time) banned poppy cultivation. Its production in 2001 reached 30,400 tons; it rose to 30,600 tons in 2003, 40,000 tons in 2004, 40,100 tons in 2005, and it continues to grow year by year. With regard to the recovery of the Afghan economy, the US administration is talking about an intervention to liberate the Afghan people taken hostage by the Taliban and to help rebuild the industrial facilities. To date, more than half of the population lives below the poverty line. Violence continues to undermine livelihood security and affect economic activity in the country. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a GDP per capita of US $19 (PPP). The population suffers from unemployment, poor sanitation, weak basic infrastructure (health, water supply, and electricity) and insecurity. Manufacturing is the only sector employing a predominantly female workforce (65% of manufacturing workers are women), accounting for only 21% of the total labor force. The industry accounts for 21% of GDP and employs 8% of the male workforce and 24% of the female workforce (source: Export Enterprises SA). Business confidence remains weak, and the number of new firm registrations remained stable in 2018. According to the IMF, growth reached 2.5% in 2017 and remains the same in 2018.

With a population growth of almost 3%, such a level of economic growth in 2018 causes a decline in per capita income. Now with poppy crops becoming less productive, growth would surely be much lower in 2019. This industry accounts for 90% of global production and generates $2 billion in annual revenue for the country. Inflation today is 5% on average. The agricultural sector accounts for 22% of GDP. The industrial sector is still weak and contributes only 22% to GDP, while services account for 56% of GDP (CIA Factbook, 2018). Over the past four years, there has been some progress in fiscal consolidation, with tax collection improving after the sharp drop in revenue in 2014. Significant trade and fiscal deficits are being financed through government subsidies, donors, allowing foreign exchange reserves to remain at satisfactory levels. In March 2018, the IMF extended the credit facility contract to Afghanistan for the third year in a row, recognizing the Afghan government’s commitments and achievements in terms of macroeconomic and financial stability, anti-corruption, and the market work.

Until the departure of American soldiers in 2014, the situation could not stabilize. Insecurity is in areas beyond the control of the government, and attacks against Western, American and Afghan troops are expanding. Numerous assassination attempts are being recorded against the country’s political leaders. The return of the Taliban in some areas since 2005 has developed a guerrilla context with attacks that have left many dead.

Since the end of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan in late 2014, the country was plunged into an even more acute crisis than it had been during the long period of occupation; 20% of Afghan territory is under the control of the insurgents, and only 56% under that of the government, the worst figure since 2001. After controversial elections, Ashraf Ghani became head of state in 2014 and formed a government of national unity. According to a report published by the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR), the Afghan government controls or influences 57% of the country’s 407 provinces. The year 2017 was a deadly year for Afghanistan, with 605 dead and nearly 1,700 wounded, the record of terrorist attacks the heaviest ever recorded on the territory. After initially announcing their departure from the country, the United States declared in August 2017 that they excluded any withdrawal of their troops from Afghanistan to avoid creating a vacuum favorable to terrorism. The year 2018 was seen as a dark new year for Afghanistan, targeted by numerous ISIS and Taliban attacks that have launched their spring offensive since the early days. On May 9, 2018, kamikaze attacks and gunmen killed several people in two police stations in Kabul. On May 15, a double suicide bombing in the Afghan capital killed at least twenty-five people, including AFP chief photographer Shah Marai and eight other journalists. Attacks by former Taliban terrorists, allied with bin Laden, were aimed particularly at Afghan security forces and Shia rallying places.

More than 25,000 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed since NATO forces announced the end of their combat operations in 2014. At least 8,050 civilians were also victims of the war in the first nine months of 2018, according to the UN, including 313 deaths due to the US-Afghan strikes, an increase of 39% compared to 2017.

In March 2018, after sixteen years of war, President Ashraf Ghani offered the Taliban peace talks without preconditions, while on the US side, the Pentagon planned to withdraw in the summer of 2019 half of the 14,000 US troops present in Afghanistan. The announcement came just after President Trump’s decision to withdraw some 2,000 US forces stationed in northeastern Syria, and a few hours after the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis. President Ghani said, A withdrawal would have no impact on the country’s security, on which the Afghan army already exercises control.

We are still waiting to see the result of the negotiation, but in the meantime, only the future will say whether the spirit of bin Laden, even in the afterlife, will continue to mourn the Middle East and other regions of the world, or if the spirit of the former leader of al-Qaeda is permanently chained by the forces of the good to prevent it from committing other abominable attacks like those against the American embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania, against the USS Cole in Yemen, or finally against the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

FOREWORD

D id you ask yourself why it was not Sweden that we attacked?

Osama bin Laden, message to the American people, 2004

On September 11, 2001, America was shaking. Al-Qaeda terrorists had struck the United States at the heart of its economic and financial center. The drama took place in Manhattan, world famous for its skyscrapers and its hectic activity. Manhattan, the cultural center of New York, with its museums, the Empire State Building, 5th Avenue, Rockefeller Center, Statue of Liberty, Times Square, and Central Park. Between 8:45 and 10:30 a.m. on September 11, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed like a house of cards to disappear on the surface of the Earth. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four planes, crashing them on both towers, the Pentagon, and in an empty terrain in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Building 7 of the World Trade Center destroyed during the attacks housed the US secret services (floors 9 and 10), the DOD, the CIA (floor 25), and the emergency services of New York City (floor 23). About 3,000 people were killed in these attacks by terrorists under Osama bin Laden. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in American history.

On September 11, 2001, American Airlines flight AA11 and United Airlines flight UA175 crashed on the north and south facades of the towers respectively, while the AA77 flight crashed at nearly 800 km/h on the Pentagon, the building of the US Department of Defense: 189 people were killed in this attack. The damage caused by the Boeing 757 on the Pentagon was severe. A fourth plane, flight UA93, crashed that same day in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The plane was heading for Washington, and forty-four people on the flight died in the crash.

According to the findings of the official investigation, half an hour after departure, the pirates hijacked the flight AA11 of the American Airlines during the trip from Boston to Los Angeles. They forced their way into the cockpit, took command of the airplane, and injured several crew members and passengers. Marwan al-Shehhi, an al-Qaeda member and trained pilot, took control of the Boeing. Flight UA175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m., seventeen minutes after the AA11 crash. The resulting impact caused the collapse of the south tower, fifty-six minutes after the crash. This increased the number of casualties by hundreds. Several fire crews and everyone stranded on the upper floors were killed.

On September 9, 2001, in Takhâr, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda committed a suicide bombing that killed the Afghani commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Two days after the raid, terrorists from the same group hijacked four American airplanes, which resulted in the tragedy of September 11, 2001. This was the deadliest attack ever perpetrated on US soil, executed presumably as part of an operation called Bojinka: a plan of terrorist attacks on American airliners discovered in January 1995. During the 9/11 strikes, 6,291 people were injured, and 2,977 people from ninety-three countries were killed. On October 17, 2001, Mary Robinson, head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, described the attacks as crimes against humanity. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States, created in 2002, in its report published in late August 2004, established the responsibility of the al-Qaeda network, claiming that the nineteen terrorists, the perpetrators of these suicide bombings, were members and the sponsor was Osama bin Laden. The latter, in a recording a few months later in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The identified terrorists were Mohamed Atta, Nawaf al-Hazni, Khalid al-Mihdhar, Satam al- Suqami, Waleed al-Shehri, Wail Mohammed al-Shehri, Marwan al-Shehhi, Majed Moqed, Hanza al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Ghamdi, Ziad Samir Jarrah, Ahmed al-Nami, Hani Hanjour, Salem al-Hazmi, Abdulaziz al-Omari, Fayez Rashid, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Mohand al-Shehri, Ahmed al-Haznawi. Fifteen of the conspirators were from Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt, and the last was from Lebanon.

The attacks of September 11, 2001, caused a considerable psychological shock to hundreds of millions of viewers watching the event live on TV. Osama bin Laden, the author of the attacks, at the age of fifty-four, was finally spotted in Bilal, on the outskirts of Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 120 kilometers north of Islamabad, and killed by an American commando, May 2, 2011.

On June 16, 2011, US Deputy Attorney General Nicholas J. Lewin signed a motion for a nonsuit terminating the lawsuit against bin Laden, because of his death. The elements are listed in the appendix to this application explaining the CIA’s conclusion that bin Laden was killed during the Abbottabad raid:

• Comparing DNA samples from the body with a DNA profile of bin Laden derived from the DNA of multiple family members; the probability of misidentification is estimated at one chance in 11.8 × 1,015;

• An analysis of the facial recognition of the body with old photos of bin Laden;

• The statement of one of bin Laden’s wives who was with him in the Abbottabad compound;

• Elements in the complex, including mail and an unpublished