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Great_Satan
prophet of God


Registered: 09/05/04
Posts: 953
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bin Laden did it
#3315955 - 11/03/04 04:59 PM (19 years, 3 months ago) |
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Osama guard gives evidence From correspondents in Hamburg
OSAMA bin Laden boasted there would be "thousands of dead" in the United States about six months before the September 11 attacks in 2001, one of his former bodyguards has told a German court.
Speaking at the trial of a Moroccan man accused of playing a role in the attacks, Shadi Abdellah said that bin Laden told members at a training camp in Afghanistan that "we want to hit America in the spinal column".
Abdellah said that months earlier the accused, Mounir El Motassadeq, had also heard bin Laden give another virulent anti-American speech.
In previous testimony before the court in the northern German city of Hamburg, Motassadeq said he had attended one of the network's training camps in Afghanistan in 2000, but never when bin Laden was there.
Motassadeq, a 28-year-old Moroccan, is the first man worldwide to stand trial over the attacks on September 11 last year.
He is charged with membership in a terrorist organisation and being an accessary in the deaths of more than 3000 people. He could face 15 years in prison if found guilty.
Prosecutors claim he was a key figure who moved money for the so-called Hamburg cell of al-Qaeda, the organisation behind the plot to hijack passenger jets and fly them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Motassadeq "was in the mosque during bin Laden's speech," said Abdellah, who was born in Jordan and worked as the al-Qaeda leader's bodyguard for a few weeks.
"It was an obligation for everyone training at the camp to go into the mosque if bin Laden was giving a speech," the 25-year-old said.
Abdellah said he had been given the job of guarding bin Laden because of his physical size and that meant he was frequently in the mosque when the Saudi millionaire spoke.
On the opening day of his trial on October 22, Motassadeq said he went to a camp near Kandahar in 2000 and for three weeks he was taught how to fire a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
He insisted he only went there for religious reasons because a good Muslim should know how to shoot.
The camp was operated by "Arabs," he said, adding that it was only when he arrived there that "I learned it was a bin Laden camp".
Bin Laden visited it, the Moroccan said, but not while he was there.
As well as meeting Motassadeq at the camp, Abdellah said he had met Ramzi bin al-Shaiba, a Yemeni arrested in Pakistan last month who was allegedly a key planner of the attacks.
Al-Shaiba is currently in custody in the United States, and judicial authorities there have refused to let him testify in the German trial.
Abdellah is one of a group of eight suspected Islamist militants from a Palestinian group known as Al-Tawhid who were arrested in April on suspicion of preparing attacks in Germany.
Motassadeq's trial is expected to run until at least January and involve some 160 witnesses.
Agence France-Presse
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,5575336%5E401,00.html
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usefulidiot
It's notfascist, it's...Neoconservative!

Registered: 11/21/02
Posts: 732
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yeah, sure, you could say 'bin laden did it'... with the help of the CIA
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole

Registered: 02/11/04
Posts: 81,741
Loc: Fractallife's gym
Last seen: 7 years, 8 months
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You know, you really aren't all that useful.
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