Documents found at Osama bin Laden's compound read at terror trial

Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Declassified al Qaeda documents found in 2011 at Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound were shared inside a Brooklyn court on Wednesday during the trial of a man charged in a terrorism plot.

Prosecutors say that Abid Naseer, a native of Pakistan, was the head of a terror cell in Britain that in 2009 planned to commit attacks in the UK, New York, and Denmark, The Associated Press reports. Naseer, who plead not guilty, said he was studying computers and the English language, and had nothing to do with al Qaeda.

The documents were translated from Arabic by an FBI linguist, and discussed terror attacks against a pipeline or the U.S. embassy in Russia, as well as targets across Europe. One letter suggested that hitting the United States "in its heartland...has the most significance" and "cannot be compared" to an attack on foreign soil. The documents also contained training methods, ways to avoid being caught by the police, and other day-to-day items. Naseer was not mentioned by name in any of the papers, AP reports.

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Catherine Garcia

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.