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March 1st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Khan told Judge James Pohl he understood the terms of the plea deal.
It is the first plea bargain among 14 Guantánamo detainees the US military classifies as “high value”.
“It’s part of a strategy of building more solid cases against the handful of defendants that the government plans to try before the commissions,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer who has represented other Guantánamo detainees.
More than 10 years after the September 11 attacks, Mohammed and four co-defendants accused of plotting the strikes are still awaiting trial at the prison, part of a US naval base in Cuba.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Pohl rejected a defence request that the terms of the plea agreement be kept secret for security reasons, saying “the nature of plea and the nature of information are already in the public domain.”
Khan is accused of working under Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s direction to plan explosions of fuel tanks at US gasoline stations and an attempted assassination of former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.
He is also accused of delivering funds for a bomb attack at a Marriott hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, that killed 11 people in August 2003.
Round-faced with a small goatee and glasses, Khan lived in the United States for seven years before his arrest in Pakistan in 2003.
“If Khan provides information on KSM and others, as has been suggested was part of the deal, it will no doubt speed up the prosecutions,” said Karen Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham Law School, referring to Mohammed, who had been scheduled to be arraigned earlier this month.
Such testimony, she said, “will break through the barriers presented by evidence obtained through torture, as this information will be presented in the present time and in a legal proceeding.”
US President Barack Obama – criticised for failing to live up to his promise to shut down Guantanamo’s prison by 2010 – could benefit from the speedy prosecutions as he seeks a new term in November elections.
Over the years, 779 inmates have been detained at Guantánamo, most without charge or trial. Most have been transferred to their home countries or third countries in recent years and released.
Today, 171 people are still languishing there in limbo, including 89 detainees who have been cleared for release but are still in custody, thanks to a law passed by the US Congress.
For the other detainees who remain, pleading guilty may be the only way to guarantee that they one day leave the facility.
“The irony is that if you’re charged with a crime and make a plea deal, you know you’ll be released someday and have some idea when. You have an end point,” says David Remes, who has represented several detainees.
“But if you’re not accused of a crime, you don’t know whether you’ll ever be released, much less when. That may be the crueler fate. The system is upside-down.”
Khan was imprisoned in a secret CIA jail for three years before being transferred to Guantánamo in 2006.
He could be asked to testify in the trial of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged Saudi mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen’s port of Aden, which killed 17 sailors and wounded another 40.
Nashiri’s lawyer, Richard Kammen, said he’s not surprised Khan has agreed to the plea bargain.
“Given the essentially lawless conditions of Guantánamo and the military commissions, many people would say or do anything to have a chance at release,” he said.
Source: AFP
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