NEW YORK- A US prosecutor told jurors at the terrorism trial of accused al-Qaida operative Abid Naseer that his plan to bomb a shopping center in England in 2009 was described in a "chilling" letter recovered during the military raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
In an opening statement at trial in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, prosecutor Celia Cohen said the letter from al-Qaida's head of Western operations updated bin Laden on plans by Naseer and others to carry out attacks in New York, Copenhagen and Manchester, England.
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Jurors were not told that the letter came from the May 2011 raid in Abbotabad, Pakistan that killed bin Laden. But before the trial, Cohen said it was recovered in that operation.
Naseer, who was extradited from Britain in 2013, is representing himself at trial. With Loretta Lynch, the US Attorney for Brooklyn who is President Barack Obama's nominee for attorney general looking on, Naseer proclaimed his innocence.
"The evidence will not show the defendant was a member of al-Qaida," Naseer said