Former Al Qaeda spokesman sentenced to life in prison

Osama bin Laden's son-in-law was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday in New York for acting as Al-Qaeda's spokesman after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith is 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 during his trial that his role was strictly religious.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan imposed the sentence a few minutes after a seemingly unrepentant Abu Ghaith delivered a statement in Arabic, quoting the Quran and declaring that he would not ask for mercy from anyone but God.

"You continue to threaten," the judge said. "You sir, in my assessment, still want to do everything you can to carry out Al-Qaeda's agenda of killing Americans."

Defense attorney Stanley Cohen asked the judge to impose a 15-year sentence. A prosecutor called for life in prison.

"At the same moment you were shackling my hands and intending to bury me alive, you are at the same time unleashing the hands of hundreds of Muslim youths," Ghaith said through an interpreter. "They will join the ranks of the free men soon and very soon the world will see the end of these theater plays."

In a statement released after the sentence, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein said, “The life sentence handed down to Sulaiman Abu Ghayth, bin Laden’s son-in-law, once again shows our federal criminal court system works and that we can successfully bring Al-Qaeda terrorists to justice.”

“This sentencing reminds the world that the United States will continue to capture and punish our enemies,” she said.

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 on 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 said 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.

In asking for leniency, Cohen compared his client to an outrageous shock-radio host. The attorney wrote in court papers that Abu Gaith "faces the harshest of penalties for talk — and only talk — which is at times zealous, pious and devout; at other times intemperate; at still others, offensive to core values of humanity."

In a submission seeking a life sentence, the U.S. government responded by calling the comparison to a radio host "as absurd as it is offensive." It also accused the defense of trying to minimize Abu Ghaith's role in promoting Al-Qaeda's deadly agenda.

The government also contended that one October 2001 video, in which Abu Ghaith promised the “storm of airplanes will not stop,” indicated that he knew beforehand of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to detonate a shoe bomb by U.K. national Richard Reid aboard a jetliner in December 2001.

"Abu Ghaith was a terrorist who sat alongside bin Laden on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001, celebrating the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent, men, women and children the day before," prosecutors wrote.

Al Jazeera and news services