NEW YORK: The self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US says the onetime Osama Bin Laden spokesman who is on trial in New York had no role in planning military operations for Al-Qaeda.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said in a statement filed in Manhattan federal court late Sunday that Sulaiman Abu Ghaith served as an Al-Qaeda spokesman because he was “an eloquent, spellbinding speaker.”
But Mohammed says Abu Ghaith “had nothing to do with military operations.”
Abu Ghaith, who is a son-in-law of Bin Laden, is charged with conspiring to kill Americans. He is the highest-level Al-Qaeda figure to be tried in the US since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Prosecutors say he was part of Al-Qaeda’s deadly plot in his role as spokesman in fiery videos and as a motivational speaker at the group’s training camps in Afghanistan.
Abu Ghaith’s lawyers have said the Kuwait-born imam made inflammatory remarks but didn’t conspire to carry out terrorism.
Defense lawyers are seeking to use testimony from Mohammed, who is in a detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They would need US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s approval to introduce the information.
The defense has suggested Mohammed could help rebut the government’s claim that Abu Ghaith must have known in advance of Al-Qaeda’s so-called shoe bomb airplane plots, including Richard Reid’s attempt to carry one out in December 2001.
The statement from Mohammed filed Sunday consisted of answers he gave to questions posed by Abu Ghaith’s lawyers.
In the statement, Mohammed said he never spoke with Abu Ghaith about the shoe bomb operation and added, “Those tasked with giving statements to the media do not necessarily know all the details of an operation and are sometimes even unaware of the very existence of the operation.”
Prosecutors rested their case Friday in the trial of Abu Ghaith. The defense case is due to start Monday.
9/11 mastermind: spokesman had no military role
9/11 mastermind: spokesman had no military role
FGM reports add to scrutiny of Somali community in Minnesota
CHICAGO: The US state of Minnesota has reportedly seen a rise in instances of female genital mutilation, or FGM, especially among the growing Somali community.
More than 260,000 Somalis live in the US, with nearly 100,000 of them settled in Minnesota. About 50,000 Somalis live in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, represented by Somali American Rep. Ilhan Omar.
UN data shows that nearly 98 percent of Somalia’s female population aged between 15 and 49 have undergone the procedure.
The controversy over FGM in Minnesota has only added to the dark cloud of alleged fraud that is hanging over the state’s Somali community. US President Donald Trump made this subject a major part of his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, calling the fraudsters “Somali pirates.”
State and federal investigators have said Somalis in Minnesota have been implicated in the theft of billions of dollars in state and federal funds intended to support childcare, food programs for families and seniors, and healthcare and mental health programs. Officials contend that this has resulted in the loss of up to $9 billion in funding over many years. In his State of the Union speech, however, Trump said the fraud has cost American taxpayers as much as $19 billion.
Muslim leaders are speaking out against the practice of FGM. Imam Kifah Mustapha of the Orland Prayer Center, one of the largest mosques in Illinois, said FGM is not representative of Muslim religious practices and is not required by Islam.
“There is nothing in Islam that says it should be done as an obligation. There’s no such thing,” Mustapha told Arab News.
“It is not something that Islam urges parents or families to do for their children at all. It is not practiced at all in most Muslim countries. It is not something Islam urges people to do or obligates people to do. We know that most Muslim countries now even prohibit it, they don’t allow it anymore.”
Congress first banned FGM on girls under the age of 18 in 1996. However, a 2018 federal court ruling struck down that law as unconstitutional. President Trump toughened the law and signed the Stop FGM Act into law in 2021, imposing a penalty of up to 10 years’ imprisonment for anyone convicted.
Forty-one US states, including Minnesota, have enacted their own laws banning FGM. The nine states that have failed to adopt bans are Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico, all states with small Muslim populations.
Minnesota was one of the first states to pass an FGM law in 1994. State Rep. Mary Franson has been fighting ever since to strengthen its enforcement. She recently told the media that cultural secrecy makes FGM “exceptionally difficult to detect” in tight-knit communities.
Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an author who survived FGM and has spoken out against it, has publicly described the lasting physical and psychological damage that she experienced. Hirsi Ali has called for a strong legal response.
Hirsi Ali was on Sunday quoted as saying: “Female genital mutilation is violence against the most vulnerable — children. It causes infection, incontinence, unbearable pain during childbirth and deep physical and emotional scars that never heal. Religious or cultural practices that deliberately and cruelly harm children must be confronted. No tradition can ever justify torture.”
In 2018, the UN Population Fund released a report showing that nearly 70 million girls will undergo FGM between 2015 and 2030.
