A US military jury yesterday convicted Osama bin Laden's media secretary of war crimes for creating an al-Qaida recruiting video that prosecutors argued incited suicide bombers.

Ali Hamza al Bahlul, about 40, of Yemen, offered no immediate reaction as the jury announced his guilty verdict.

He became only the second detainee among the 255 here ever convicted of war crimes before the special terror court US President George W. Bush ordered set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

He will now join bin Laden's driver in a convict's corridor at the prison camps.

There was no evidence across last week's four-day, no-contest trial that Bahlul, a father of four from Yemen's Red Sea region, ever fired a shot at Americans during his 1999-2001 tenure in Afghanistan.

But the Pentagon argued that Bahlul committed three war crimes by creating a two-hour video that spliced fiery bin Laden speeches with Muslim bloodshed and stock news footage of the aftermath of the October 2000 suicide bombing of the US warship Cole.

Bahlul could get a life sentence.

Bin Laden's driver, Salim Hamdan, also of Yemen, was convicted of supporting terror in August.

A different jury sentenced him to time served plus the rest of 2008 in prison.