Richard Reid was not there to advocate for himself or cooperate with the federal government. He had been subpoenaed by Nizar Trabelsi, a former skilled soccer participant accused of planning his personal suicide bombing at a army base in Belgium.
The weird transfer was a part of a case that ended with an uncommon verdict in a global terrorism trial. On Friday, Trabelsi, 53, was acquitted of conspiring to homicide People overseas, trying to make use of a weapon of mass destruction and supporting a terrorist group — after 10 years in custody awaiting trial and 17 years after he was first indicted in D.C. federal court docket.
A Justice Division official mentioned Trabelsi can be positioned in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after which elimination proceedings however wouldn’t remark additional. It isn’t clear the place he’ll go. He’s a citizen of Tunisia, however he was convicted in absentia there on terrorism costs, and the extradition settlement between the USA and Belgium bars sending him to a 3rd nation with out Belgian approval. Final yr, a Belgian court docket ordered the federal government to ask for Trabelsi to be returned to Belgium.
Trabelsi was arrested in Brussels two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults and some months earlier than Reid’s failed try. He confessed to Belgian authorities that he deliberate to kill U.S. troops stationed at Kleine Brogel Air Base with an ammonium nitrate bomb. He additionally mentioned he and Osama bin Laden flew by helicopter to participate within the Taliban’s destruction of historical Buddhist statues carved right into a cliff in Afghanistan. After serving a 10-year sentence in Belgium and a prolonged extradition battle, he was placed on trial in Washington.
In a deposition performed in court docket, Trabelsi’s spouse testified that her husband instructed her he would commit a suicide bombing, both in Belgium or on the U.S. Embassy in Paris, and confirmed her a paper from bin Laden labeling him a future martyr. Saajid Badat, one other would-be shoe bomber who spent 11 years in jail in the UK, testified that he was supposed to assist with the plot however didn’t make contact earlier than Trabelsi was arrested.
However within the six-week trial, Trabelsi claimed his earlier confessions and the incriminating testimony had been false and inconceivable — calling Reid as proof.
Reid testified that he was with al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001 and knew Badat however had by no means seen or heard of Trabelsi. He additionally mentioned the terrorist group wouldn’t have recruited a married father like Trabelsi to change into a suicide bomber and didn’t write down martyrs’ names, and that an al-Qaeda operative’s spouse wouldn’t be aware about particulars Trabelsi’s ex-wife testified about or have gotten weapons coaching as she claimed.
“Because the People say, free lips sink ships,” Reid testified. “Nothing was completed in writing.” He mentioned “women and men don’t combine” in conservative Islam, and that he by no means spoke to a girl in Afghanistan; he raised his shackled fingers to point out how at houses of married {couples} meals was dropped at males on dumbwaiters to keep away from such interactions. He mentioned that in his 4 years in Afghanistan he additionally by no means noticed a helicopter till the U.S. invasion.
Trabelsi was “a has-been soccer participant,” protection legal professional Sabrina Shroff mentioned in closings; bin Laden “wouldn’t put apart safety considerations to present an vital job” to him.
Prosecutors argued that Trabelsi volunteered to be a suicide bomber and insisted on it even after being discouraged by bin Laden.
Trabelsi testified by a French interpreter that his earlier accounts had been made up together with his Belgian interrogators, and that he endorsed them solely as a result of he thought that will assist him see his new child youngster and keep away from being despatched to Guantánamo Bay. He additionally mentioned he was sleep-deprived and never but fluent in French when he signed an in depth confession.
“It was torture,” he mentioned of his therapy. “I can’t sleep for the previous 22 years.” In court docket filings, his attorneys say he has been held for the previous decade in solitary confinement and has a number of severe well being points.
Born in Tunisia, Trabelsi turned knowledgeable soccer participant in his teenagers and moved to Europe in 1989 to play for a German crew. However he mentioned he skilled racism often, significantly as a result of he was married to a White lady. One among his two daughters died whereas he was away at a recreation. Courtroom paperwork present he started doing medicine, misplaced his soccer profession and went to jail, the place he discovered faith. “I used to be not blissful,” he testified. “I dedicated numerous sins in my previous life.”
He met a girl from Morocco, married once more and moved together with her to Afghanistan in 2000. He testified they had been there to do “humanitarian” work and solely went to bin Laden for assist. Trabelsi mentioned he was launched to the al-Qaeda chief by his “greatest buddy” Abu Zubaida, a facilitator for Islamic militants in Afghanistan. (Initially believed to be a high-ranking al-Qaeda official, Zubaida was tortured repeatedly by the CIA and has been held by the USA with out costs for 22 years). Trabelsi additionally admitted to understanding Djamel Beghal, described in court docket as a French al-Qaeda recruiter, however solely by loaning him cash.
“You won’t like Nizar Trabelsi,” Shroff mentioned in closing, however “we aren’t judged by who our mates are.”
Trabelsi returned to Europe in July 2001, with a pocket book containing an inventory of chemical compounds that would produce a extremely damaging bomb. When he was arrested at an house in Brussels on Sept. 13, a person was coming to see him from a close-by restaurant, the place authorities discovered two of the chemical compounds. In addition they discovered a machine gun in Trabelsi’s house. On the stand, Trabelsi claimed he was merely delivering the record as a favor to somebody in Afghanistan and that the restaurant worker was bringing him a baguette. (That man was additionally convicted in Belgium.)
Shroff mentioned in closing arguments {that a} Belgian investigating decide had acted inappropriately, together with by following Trabelsi into the lavatory.
“This case comes down to at least one factor and one factor solely,” she mentioned. “Whether or not you possibly can belief the phrases of a person who calls himself a decide and acts like something however.”
Trabelsi’s ex-wife wouldn’t come to the USA to testify, so jurors noticed solely a video deposition by which he questioned her instantly, and she or he refused to reply a few of his queries.
Assistant U.S. Legal professional Thomas Saunders referred to as Trabelsi’s protection an “unbelievable … fiction” that will require collusion throughout a number of investigatory our bodies and a collection of “inconceivable coincidences.” Even when some claims made by Trabelsi or different witnesses couldn’t be corroborated, he mentioned, the totality of the proof was overwhelming. And he mentioned criticisms of the Belgian course of had been misguided as a result of the nation has a really totally different authorized system.
“He meant to kill People, homicide People, a whole lot of People,” Saunders mentioned as he pointed at Trabelsi, who shook his head with indignation.
Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism skilled at Georgetown College, mentioned the decision to him underscored that “the warfare on terror is over” for many People.
“This can be a one who within the first decade and a half after 9/11 would in all probability have been convicted,” Hoffman mentioned.
Reid, who pleaded responsible, calmly mentioned his personal terrorism plans. He mentioned he bought coaching in Afghanistan in “primary arms,” ways for metropolis or mountain preventing and making improvised explosive gadgets. He described washing his passport so he might get a brand new one to do reconnaissance in Israel earlier than his bombing try. He agreed that the suicide mission was in all probability unsuccessful as a result of rain dampened the fuse in his shoe.
Reid mentioned he regretted “elements of” what he did and was not the identical particular person he was in 2003. Requested if his regret included practically killing 200 folks, he replied, “You may say so.” However he refused to say who had made his bomb.
“In Islam you’re taking duty in your personal actions, and also you don’t throw different folks underneath the bus,” he testified.
On the stand, Trabelsi repeatedly mentioned he was promised that “If I confess I went to Belgium to assault the army base, the Belgian authorities won’t ever extradite me to the USA.”
The extradition course of was contentious. He fought in court docket from jail, arguing that sending him to the USA would violate each European Union human rights legal guidelines and a provision of the extradition treaty that bars prosecuting somebody twice for a similar crime. He was profitable, however Belgium nonetheless extradited him in 2013 whereas the litigation was ongoing. The Belgian authorities has since been ordered to pay Trabelsi practically 200,000 euros in damages and to ask the USA to return him to Belgium. However D.C. federal courts repeatedly rejected his appeals over the previous decade.
“The jury did an exceptional job parsing the proof and realizing the Belgians had handled Mr. Trabelsi in probably the most despicable of the way,” Shroff and fellow protection legal professional Marc Eisenstein mentioned after the decision.
On Friday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. legal professional’s workplace in Washington mentioned, “We respect the jury’s verdict and thank them for his or her service.”
Devlin Barrett and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.
