The scene reported from Thursday’s pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo against the alleged 9/11 plotters was truly bizarre. Five defendants including Walid Bin Attash, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were scheduled to appear. After Attash, Ali, and Hawsawi arrived, they were told that they would not be allowed to speak due to objections by their assigned lawyers. Thus they complained loudly and were escorted from the courtroom.
The hearing was the first for the 9/11 accused since Mr. Obama announced plans to expand the rights of detainees in a revamped version of the military commissions first put in place by the Bush administration. Obama administration officials say they are consulting with 9/11 family members. They say the president still seeks to bring alleged terrorists to justice, some in criminal courts and others in revamped military tribunals.
...Along with Mr. Mohammed, the other defendants are Walid Bin Attash, Ramzi bin al Shibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa al Hawsawi. The boycott attempt by the prisoners sowed confusion in court Thursday. Attorneys said in court that the boycott was likely prompted by the judge's decision not allow defendants to speak, except for two who were the subject of motions in the hearing.
...When [Attash, Ali, and Hawsawi] arrived they discovered that the judge wouldn't allow Messrs. Hawsawi and Ali to speak because they have attorneys who objected. Mr. Hawsawi complained loudly and finally was allowed to leave, shouting "Allahu Akbar" as he exited. Mr. Ali, through his attorney, complained that he was "blackmailed" into coming to the hearing.
To the dissapointment of 9/11 victims’ family members who attended the hearing, Binalshibh and Mohammed did not appear at all. It was announced that the two were boycotting the hearing.
Thursday's hearing was meant to focus on whether Mr Hawsawi and a fourth defendant, Ramzi Binalshibh, were mentally competent to represent themselves.
The US military lawyer representing Mr Binalshibh said he suffered from a delusional disorder. When the lawyer went into detail about how he had been deprived of sleep, her microphone was cut off.
The fifth defendant, Mr Sheikh Mohammed, refused to attend the hearing.
If this episode is any type of indicator, it would appear that the quality of justice being delivered through our system of military commissions is not acceptable. This case deserves to have the full spectrum of the law applied to it.
How in the world can the alleged 9/11 masterminds be allowed to boycott a hearing? Why did Binalshibh’s lawyer have her microphone cut off? Why weren’t the accused allowed to speak?
The fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did not present himself is particularly curious. The identity of the prisoner held at Guantanamo and referred to as KSM is a dubious one. In March 2003, the detainee was arrested at a suburban home outisde of Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
About 25 Pakistani intelligence and police officers armed with Kalashnikov rifles surrounded the home of Ahmed Abdul Qadoos, 42, a member of Pakistan's fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party, at 3am on Saturday.
...At first police were not sure who they had caught as they had no recent photographs of Mohammed but his identity was confirmed a few minutes later by American CIA and FBI officials who were waiting outside.
...Qadoos is married with two children and was living with his parents. His father is a retired microbiologist who had worked for the United Nations, while his mother is a leader of the women's wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's most prominent Islamic party.
The Pakistani family who had been raided denied the official version of the arrests.
Dr Abdul Quddus Khan, 78, a retired microbiologist who runs a respected cardiology institute lives at the house with his wife Mahlaqa, their son Ahmed, 42, his wife and their two young children. Dr Khan and his wife were at a wedding in Lahore on Friday.
At 3am on Saturday a squad of around 20 armed police and intelligence officers kicked open the door and burst into the house. They dragged away Ahmed and held his wife and children at gunpoint for an hour as they ransacked the house, according to Ahmed's sister Qudsia.
...At no point, the family say, was Mohammed or any other man in the house. The agents did not even ask about them. "The only people in the house were my brother, his wife and their kids," Qudsia said. "I have absolutely no idea why the police came here."
Is KSM being kept out of view because his identity is in question? Is this man the same as the one who was targeted in Pakistan over six years ago? How did we find out that KSM was the mastermind to begin with?
It turns out that the person to connect KSM with 9/11 was actually an al-Jazeera reporter named Yosri Fouda who interviewed Mohammed and bin al-Shibh in April 2002.
Yosri Fouda of the Arabic television channel al-Jazeera is the only journalist to have interviewed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaida military commander arrested at the weekend. Here he describes the two-day encounter with him and his fellow organiser of September 11, Ramzi bin al- Shibh: It was late afternoon, Sunday 21 April 2002, when I packed my bags before joining Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-shibh for a last prayer before saying goodbye.
...It was only after my 48-hour encounter with the masterminds of the "Holy Tuesday" operations in New York and Washington that the world, including the CIA and FBI, came to learn that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is al-Qaida's number three and that his importance to the group as a terrorist organiser in the field exceeds that of his boss, Bin Laden.
...Summoning every thread of experience and courage, I looked Khalid in the eye and asked: "Did you do it?" The reference to September 11 was implicit. Khalid responded with little fanfare: "I am the head of the al-Qaida military committee," he began, "and Ramzi is the coordinator of the Holy Tuesday operation. And yes, we did it."
Here’s the al-Jazeera video including the interview:
Part 1
Part 2
In September 2002, five months after Fouda’s interview, there was a joint US-Pakistani raid in Karachi where KSM was reported to have perished.
Now it has emerged that Kuwaiti national Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did indeed perish in the raid, but his wife and child were taken from the apartment and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in whose hands they remain.
...the Pakistani press carried pictures of a message scrawled in blood on the wall of the flat, proclaiming the Muslim refrain of Kalma, in Arabic: "There is no God except Allah, Mohammed is his messenger"). An official who was present in the flat at the time of the shooting has told Asia Times Online that the message was written by Shaikh Mohammed with his own blood as his life drained from him.
...an Arab woman and a child were taken to an ISI safe house, where they identified the Shaikh Mohammed's body as their husband and father. The body was kept in a private NGO mortuary for 20 days before being buried, under the surveillance of the FBI, in a graveyard in the central district of Karachi.
So is KSM actually dead? Did the military falsely identify the person who is currently being imprisoned in his name?
The best way to answer these concerns is to hold public trials in federal court. Since the attacks of 9/11 were on U.S. soil, its prosecution deserves to be as well.