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Terror Networks
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed & four others to stand trial in New York
2009-11-13
WASHINGTON -- Prosecutors will seek the death penalty for self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees, who will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday.

At a news conference Friday, the attorney general said five other suspects will be sent to military commissions. Holder said the detainees in the New York case will be tried in a courthouse just blocks from where the Sept. 11 attackers felled the twin towers.

Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in President Obama's plan to close the terror suspect detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the detention center by Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

The New York case may also force the court system to confront a host of difficult legal issues surrounding counterterrorism programs begun after the 2001 attacks, including the harsh interrogation techniques once used on some of the suspects while in CIA custody. The most severe method -- waterboarding, or simulated drowning -- was used on Mohammed 183 times in 2003, before the practice was banned.

Holder also announced that a major suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, will face justice before a military commission, as will a handful of other detainees to be identified at the same announcement, the official said.

It was not immediately clear where commission-bound detainees like al-Nashiri might be sent, but a military brig in South Carolina has been high on the list of considered sites.

The actual transfer of the detainees from Guantanamo to New York isn't expected to happen for many more weeks because formal charges have not been filed against most of them.

Holder had been considering other possible trial locations, including Virginia, Washington and a different courthouse in New York City. Those districts could all end up conducting trials of other Guantanamo detainees sent to federal court later on.

The attorney general's decision in these cases comes just before a Monday deadline for the government to decide how to proceed against 10 detainees facing military commissions. The administration has already sent one Guantanamo detainee, Ahmed Ghailani, to New York to face trial, but chose not to seek death in that case.

At the last major trial of al-Qaeda suspects held at that courthouse in 2001, prosecutors did seek death for some of the defendants.

Mohammed already has an outstanding terror indictment against him in New York, for an unsuccessful plot called "Bojinka" to simultaneously take down multiple airliners over the Pacific Ocean in the 1990s.

Some members of Congress have fought any effort to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial in the United States, saying it would be too dangerous for nearby civilians. The Obama administration has defended the planned trials, saying many terrorists have been safely tried, convicted, and imprisoned in the United States, including the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, Ramzi Yousef.

Mohammed and the four others --Waleed bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali -- are accused of orchestrating the attacks that killed 2,973 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

Mohammed admitted to interrogators that he was the mastermind of the attacks -- he allegedly proposed the concept to Osama bin Laden as early as 1996, obtained funding for the attacks from bin Laden, oversaw the operation and trained the hijackers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The charges against the others are:

  • Bin Attash, a Yemeni, allegedly ran an al-Qaeda training camp in Logar, Afghanistan, where two of the 19 hijackers were trained. Bin Attash is believed to have been bin Laden's bodyguard. Authorities say bin Laden selected him as a hijacker, but he was prevented from participating when he was briefly detained in Yemen in early 2001.
  • Binalshibh, a Yemeni, allegedly helped find flight schools for the hijackers, helped them enter the United States and assisted with financing the operation. He allegedly was selected to be a hijacker and made a "martyr video" in preparation for the operation, but was unable to get a U.S. visa. He also is believed to be a lead operative for a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport.

  • Ali allegedly helped nine of the hijackers travel to the United States and sent them $120,000 for expenses and flight training. He is believed to have served as a key lieutenant to Mohammed in Pakistan. He was born in Pakistan and raised in Kuwait.

  • Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, a Saudi, allegedly helped the hijackers with money, western clothing, traveler's checks and credit cards. Al-Hawsawi testified in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, saying he had seen Moussaoui at an al-Qaeda guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in early 2001, but was never introduced to him or conducted operations with him.
    • Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC

    #3  Instead of putting these people on trial, the Obamanauts think they're going to put the Bush administration and the WOT on trial. What really is going to happen is that the American judicial system is going to be on trial. When it fails, the sanctity in the structures the judiciary has erected for decades will die with them.
    Posted by: Procopius2k   2009-11-13 19:54  

    #2  Others think it's a feature, not a bug, of Zero's and Holder's agenda
    Posted by: Frank G   2009-11-13 19:10  

    #1  A clever defense attorney will try to get evidence and charges eliminated based on waterboarding. They'll attempt to obtain classified evidence and complain if they can't get it. They'll want covert CIA operatives and Bush officials to testify and try to make the trial about them. They'll complain about bias in the NYC jury pool and try to pack the jury with left wing loons. As the trial drags on, possibly for years, it will make NYC an even more attractive terror target.

    This trial will turn into a circus and it's even possible that there will be a hung jury or the terrorists may even be acquitted.

    This is all foreseeable and I hope Obama pays a heavy political price for this. I just pray that America doesn't pay a price in lives lost to a new terrorist attack due to the administration's stupidity.
    Posted by: DMFD   2009-11-13 18:13  

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