GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- An Army prosecutor on Tuesday described an alleged al Qaeda propagandist as being at the heart of the Afghan-based terror group by early 2000, a time when Osama bin Laden had decided to spread his message through media and mayhem.

The accused, Ali Hamza al Bahlul, listened intently as the prosecutor outlined plans for a weeklong trial showcasing spy-plane imagery, video gadgetry, prison camp confessions, intercepted letters and testimony from convicted terrorists.

Bahlul, about 40, is charged with three war crimes for working as bin Laden's media secretary after he moved from his native Yemen to Afghanistan in February 1999 until his capture in the U.S. invasion in late 2001. Conviction could carry, at most, life in prison.

''In Afghanistan, the accused served as the media man for Osama bin Laden and other members of the organization,'' prosecutor Army Maj. Dan Cowhig said, noting that Bahlul was also sometimes confused for bin Laden's bodyguard because he carried a rifle and grenades along with the boss' laptop.

In essence, the prosecutor said, Bahlul's role was ''to launch propaganda for al Qaeda,'' to create a video that made ``a political argument, an indoctrination, a solicitation.''

That movie, he said, includes a chapter called ''The Destruction of the American Destroyer USS Cole'' -- which splices special effects, tales of suicide bombings, bin Laden speeches celebrating jihad and al Qaeda forces in training.

Seventeen U.S. sailors died aboard the USS Cole in the October 2000 suicide bombing. Two men in a small explosives-laden vessel pulled up alongside the Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden and detonated the load, crippling the $1 billion warship.

Prosecutors cast Bahlul's role in making that film as the smoking-gun evidence in their conspiracy case, which alleges he solicited the murder of protected people and provided material support for terror.

Throughout it all, the five-foot-three Yemeni with a tidy beard wearing prison camp sneakers and tan uniform sat in stony silence, sticking to a boycott he imposed on himself and his Pentagon-appointed attorney.

Evidence admitted at the trial included letters the Guantánamo captive wrote two accused Sept. 11 conspirators, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi bin al Shibh, from his cell in Cuba.

Rather than deliver them, the chief prosecutor said, the U.S. government scooped them up as evidence.

It delivered copies to the jury of nine senior military officers on Tuesday.

''If I were incapable of jihad with my hands, soul or money, only jihad by word and pen is left,'' he wrote to Mohammed in June 2007.

''America is not only fighting against the allies of Allah,'' he also wrote. ``It is fighting against Allah.''

In particular, Cowhig accused Bahlul of creating propaganda designed to overcome a devout Muslim's reluctance to become a suicide bomber, by celebrating martyrdom. Suicide is a sin in mainstream Islam.

Cowhig never said Bahlul knew details of the Sept. 11 attacks before they unfolded. But he did quote him as saying, afterward, that he envied those with major roles in it.

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