In a Brooklyn, New York, courtroom, a federal jury this week was the first to hear the contents of the letter and other documents seized during the bin Laden raid in Pakistan.
The documents were read at the terrorism trial of a man named Abid Naseer, 28, who was arrested in 2009 in Manchester, England, where he had been living on a student visa. They were penned by senior al Qaeda operatives, according to prosecutors.
Brooklyn federal prosecutor Celia Cohen described Naseer to the jury as a “key member” of a broad scheme to “take innocent lives” during a series of alleged failed attacks at a Manchester shopping center, a newsroom in Copenhagen and the subways of New York.
Naseer is not mentioned in the al Qaeda documents.
“I had no involvement in the activities mentioned in those documents,” Naseer told the jury Thursday.
The release of the al Qaeda papers coincides with the arrests Wednesday of three Brooklyn men accused by the federal government of attempting to join ISIS and of fostering separate plans to kill President Barack Obama and shoot law enforcement officers.
White House, Congress and Pentagon
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Naseer’s 2009 arrest in England was part of a massive sweep in connection with an alleged plot to carry out bomb attacks in Britain. He was extradited in January 2013.
A number of British intelligence agents — disguised with makeup and wearing wigs — testified that they tracked Naseer in 2009 as he visited a Manchester mall that was to be attacked.
Another witness was an FBI official who was in Afghanistan and oversaw the trove of evidence collected in the bin Laden raid.
The counterterror official, Alexander Otte, testified that he saw bin Laden’s body as it arrived at a military hangar.
“I knew who he was,” he said. “I recognized him immediately.”
CNN’s Laura Ly and Deborah Feyerick contributed to this report.
