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May 5th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
It was the first public appearance in more than three years for Mohammed, the
self-confessed architect of the worst act of terrorism the world has
witnessed, and his four alleged co-conspirators. The five men face the death
penalty for 2,976 individual counts of murder.
Mohammed stroked his straggly, thick beard, grey when last seen, but now
tinged heavily reddish-brown with henna, yet showed no emotion as he stared
ahead blankly or looked down at notes on his desk. He was wearing white
robes, issued by the military authorities, and a white cap.
The five removed earphones carrying Arabic translation and indicated they
would not co-operate with the proceedings, to the exasperation of Col James
Pohl, the military judge. He also scolded defence lawyers who attempted to
raise the men’s complaints about their treatment at the Guantanamo detention
centre.
Much of the first hour was bogged down in arguments about translation. Even
the simultaneous interpreters complained at one stage about being asked to
translate when the judge and defence lawyers were speaking at the same time.
The five men ignored the judge as he asked them if they accepted their defence
team – a combination of military lawyers and civilian attorneys who
specialise in fighting death penalty cases.
“Accused refuses to answer,” Col Pohl said repeatedly for the court record
after being met with silence.
He was expected later to ask the defence lawyers if they wished to waive the
right to have read the full 123-page charge sheet – including more than 60
pages listing the names of the dead.
He was also due to ask the defendants whether they wanted to plead guilty, not
guilty or to reserve their plea. But the legal stalemate over procedural
issues and motions of complaint by the defence could mean that phase would
be held over until another hearing.
The defence lawyers were turned down in their requests to raise the men’s
complaints about their treatment, and that they were prevented from wearing
civilian clothes of their choice.
“I believe Mr Mohammed will decline to address the court. I believe he’s
deeply concerned about the fairness of the proceedings,” said his civilian
lawyer, David Nevin.
“The reason that he is not putting the earphones on is because of the torture
that was inflicted upon him.”
Lawyers have previously been told that they cannot discuss the accusations of
torture or the activities of the CIA, whose agents interrogated Mohammed
using waterboarding – simulated drowning – 183 times, according to a US
federal report.
Col Pohl warned that he would not permit defendants to block the hearing and
would continue without Mohammed’s participation. “One cannot choose not to
participate and frustrate the normal course of business,” he said.
Later, Mohammed put on his spectacles and turned his chair around to watch and
listen intently as his lawyer questioned Col Pohl about his credentials and
experience, including asking several times about issues of torture.
Mr Nevin asked whether his client’s “treatment during his incarceration, which
consisted of torture, is appropriate mitigation” to lessen his possible
punishment. Col Pohl declined to be drawn on questions of mitigation or on
his views of interrogation techniques, saying that he would implement the
law as it stands.
Mr Nevin also asked whether he “has any experience with the issue of torture
of prisoners?” Col Pohl did not use the word torture, but said he had been
involved in detainee abuse cases after the Abu Ghraib scandal, for which
several soldiers were prosecuted for abusing Iraqi prisoners.
The start of the hearing was delayed as bin Attash had to be forced by guards
from his cell and carried, strapped into a chair, along corridors to the
specially built courtroom in a hangar-style structure.
Cheryl Bormann, a civilian attorney for bin Attash, wore a black hijab and
long black robe and told the court that the treatment of her client at
Guantanamo had interfered with his ability to participate in the
proceedings. “These men have been mistreated,” she said.
She asked the judge to order other women in court to cover themselves up,
saying it was wrong that otherwise the defendants would be “forced to not
look at the prosecution for fear of committing a sin under their faith”.
The judge said that until the question of the men’s legal representation was
settled, the attorneys had no standing to make motions concerning the
defendants’ treatment. But the defendants still refused to answer the
judge’s questions. The only one of the accused to speak during the morning
session was al-Shibh, who interrupted a testy exchange between the judge and
a lawyer with an outburst about Muammar Gaddafi, the former Libyan dictator.
When Col Pohl told him to be quiet, he continued in broken English: “Maybe
they will kill me and say I committed suicide. Maybe you are not going to
see me any more. This is the way that we are treated in this camp.”
The otherwise silent protest was in marked contrast to the last time that the
defendants appeared in court in the long-stalled legal process in December
2008 when Mohammed tried to confess and plead guilty and declared his desire
to be a martyr.
He revelled in his role as the September 11 ringleader, boasting that he was
responsible for the attacks “from A to Z” and signing court documents as
“KSM”, the initials by which US law enforcement referred to him during their
global manhunt.
The charge sheet listed his meticulous eye for control and man management.
With his US college education, he coached the Arabic hijackers for their
mission with English phrases such as “If anyone moves, I’ll kill you”, then
oversaw their practice for cutting the throats of flight crew with craft
knives by slaughtering sheep and goats.
The attacks that the five are accused of planning, organising and financing
struck at the heart of America. They destroyed the twin towers of the World
Trade Centre in New York, the symbol of the country’s financial strength;
hit the Pentagon, its military hub; and were only thwarted in their plan to
attack its political heart – the White House or more likely Congress’s
offices – when passengers brought down Flight 93 in a Pennsylvania field.
For the relatives of those killed on September 11, it was a bittersweet day as
– more than a decade since the attacks and nine years since Mohammed was
captured in Pakistan – the final steps towards justice for the accused began.
Five family members attended the hearing in Guantanamo; dozens of others
watched the proceedings on a live video-stream at four US military bases in
the north-east of the US, including Fort Meade, a sprawling army
installation in Maryland that is home to the US Cyber Command and the
National Security Agency.
Relatives at Guantanamo said they were grateful for the chance to see a case
they believe has been delayed too long.
Cliff Russell, whose brother Stephen, a fireman, died at the twin towers, said
he hoped the case would end with the death penalty. “I’m not looking forward
to ending someone else’s life and taking satisfaction in it,” he said.
“But it’s the most disgusting, hateful, awful thing I ever could think of if
you think about what was perpetrated.”
Suzanne Sisolak of Brooklyn, whose husband Joseph was killed in his office in
the World Trade Centre’s North Tower, said she was not concerned about the
outcome as long as the case moved forward. “They can put them in prison for
life. They can execute them,” she said. “What I do care about is that this
does not happen again.”
Maureen Basnicki, 61, whose husband Ken was attending a breakfast conference
in the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th floor of the North
Tower, flew in from Canada to follow the hearing at the base cinema in Fort
Hamilton in Brooklyn.
“Part of me was trying to get a sense of justice and to understand why these
men were so full of hate that they would slaughter so many innocent
civilians, though I always doubted those questions would be answered for
me,” she said.
“But what was really important for me was to share this moment with other 9/11 family
members. It is their support and solidarity that matters to me at this time.
I wanted to be with them this day.”
The hearing dragged several hours past its scheduled finish, after the defence
lawyers’ inquisition about the judge’s records added to the delays caused by
their clients’ recalcitrance.
At Fort Hamilton, Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was pilot of the
hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 that was flown into the Pentagon, said
the victims’ families were “fed up” with the defence tactics that were
“frustrating but not surprising”.
Earlier she had warned that the men wanted to die as martyrs, and were “proud
of committing the worst war crime of modern times”.
“These men are just trying to mock the system by disrupting it,” she said.
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has proudly admitted his role as mastermind of the
attacks but now is playing legal games.
“But we are drawing support and strength from each other as we observe this.
We lost family members in the attacks but we have gained a new family from
our own numbers.”
She said the greatest outrage came when Miss Bormann asked the court to
require female members of the prosecution, who are serving military
personnel, to wear Islamic dress.
“These are the men who slaughtered our loved ones, but they are accusing the
court of being culturally insensitive and forcing them to sin, just for
having to look at female uniformed lawyers. It’s outrageous.”
Josh Meyer and Terry McDermott, co-authors of the recent book The Hunt for
KSM, say that from for more than a decade, he devoted himself entirely
to terrorism, admitting to involvement in more than 30 separate plots.
“KSM is a complex personality – charming, funny, smart, the kind of guy
everyone liked immediately,” they wrote. “But he was also a
stone-cold killer who seemed to devise new plans for mass murder with every
waking moment.
“There are still agents recruited by KSM on the loose, We might be
dealing with KSM-designed or inspired attacks for years. More generally, KSM
is the prototype of the modern, stateless enemy likely to haunt [the world]
for decades to come.”
After the 9-11 attacks, Mohammed hatched the plan for Richard Reid, the
British “shoe bomber”, to blow up a plane en route from Paris to
Miami and coordinated the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002. He has also
claimed responsibility in interviews for beheading Daniel Pearl, the
American journalist captured and murdered in Karachi.
As the hearing began, critics reiterated their criticism of the military
commission system which Mr Obama had come into office promising to end.
“The victims of the horrific 9/11 attacks deserve justice, but using a
tribunal that allows coerced evidence will never be seen as fair,” said
Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director, who attended the
proceedings in Guantánamo.
“By doing so, President Obama has both compromised prospects for a
credible trial and undermined inquiry into Bush-era interrogation practices.
That is a gift to terrorist recruiters and a danger to US security.”
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