AN American who trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in early 2001 before losing his nerve has testified how he encountered Osama bin Laden and bin Laden’s son-in-law at a safe house — and that bin Laden hinted that a suicide attack on US soil was in the works.
Sahim Alwan, speaking at court, also claimed he delivered some news that cannot have been good for the terror chief’s ego — telling bin Laden he wanted to go home and that US youth were indifferent to his extremist deeds.
Mr Alwan’s testimony came at the trial of bin Laden’s son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who is accused of plotting to kill Americans by being a motivational speaker at al-Qaeda training camps before the September 11 attacks and by acting as a spokesman for the terror group afterward when it sought to recruit more militants to its cause.
Bin Laden dropped his hint at the suicide attacks on New York and the Pentagon which were to come in September that year, as he spoke to Mr Alwan and other recruits.
“Just know you have brothers willing to carry their souls in their hands,” bin Laden declared, Mr Alwan said on the witness stand in federal court in New York City.
Asked what he thought that meant, Mr Alwan responded, “To die.”
Mr Alwan, 41, was among a half-dozen men who became known as the Lackawanna Six after their arrests on charges of providing material support to terrorists by attending bin Laden’s al-Farooq camp in Afghanistan in 2001. He pleaded guilty in 2003 and served about seven years behind bars.