NEW YORK : A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, who once served as a spokesman for al Qaeda, has failed to win the dismissal of a US indictment accusing him of conspiring to kill Americans. The defendant, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, also failed to win the suppression of statements he made while being interrogated by FBI agents nearly nine months ago, as he was being flown to the United States from Jordan to face the US conspiracy charge. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan rejected Abu Ghaith’s arguments that federal prosecutors brought their case too late and violated his due process rights.
The judge found a lack of “credible evidence” that the United States could have indicted Abu Ghaith sooner and ended what the defendant called his “continual detention” in Iran from 2002 to January 2013, but instead deliberately waited to obtain a “tactical advantage.”