Al-Qaeda wife calls for Kuwait trial

Abu Ghaith’s last TV appearance last December warned the US against continued occupation

“He was an ideal husband who loved Kuwait and served it in the most difficult times, and if he made a mistake, only the Almighty doesn’t,” Umm Yusif told al-Ray al-Aam newspaper.
  
Abu Ghaith, reportedly detained in Iran along with top members of Osama bin Laden’s network, was stripped of his Kuwaiti nationality in October 2001 because of links to the 11 September attacks on the United States.
  
“He did not harm or kill anyone,” said an emotional Umm Yussif. “He’s not a terrorist, merely a spokesman.”
  
The newspaper said Abu Ghaith’s wife pleaded for her husband to be returned to Kuwait and not extradited to the United States, “because he is a genuine Kuwaiti and his wife and children are Kuwaiti.”
  
Trip to Afghanistan

Umm Yusif also told how she had previously accompanied him to Afghanistan.
  
“I decided to accompany him to Afghanistan because he’s kind and his intention was to help people, not only the Mujahadiin.” 

The mother of six girls and one boy said she did not see any other Kuwaitis in Afghanistan and that she returned to the emirate in early September 2001 due to complications in her pregnancy.
  
It was soon afterwards that Umm Yusif saw her husband on the Qatar-based Aljazeera satellite channel, after which the former school-teacher and mosque imam appeared numerous times threatening more terror attacks.
  
The spokesman last appeared on Aljazeera in December, announcing that al-Qaeda took responsibility for the November 2002 attacks in Kenya which killed 13 people.
  
At the time, he called on al-Qaeda fighters to “prepare themselves seriously for the next phase which will be bigger and more serious.”
  
After losing his Kuwaiti nationality, he told a Kuwaiti newspaper through a mediator that he would “still continue a Jihad, even if bin Laden died.”