U.S. charges top al-Qaida suspects
Steven Edwards Canwest News Service
Monday, February 11, 2008
NEW YORK - The United States unveiled sweeping charges Monday against six top al-Qaida suspects it says were central architects of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The Pentagon says it will seek the death penalty against the six, who are among 15 “high value detainees” the U. S. is holding in a secret camp at the U. S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
It plans a single trial for all six before a specially constituted military commission the Bush administration sees as a central pillar of its war on terror.
The proceeding will be the most high-profile war-crimes trial since the Allied powers mounted the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War to prosecute Nazi leaders.
“The charges allege a long-term, highly sophisticated, organized plan by al-Qaida to attack the United States of America,” said Brig.-Gen. Thomas Hartmann, legal advisor to the commission’s oversight authority at the Pentagon.
The announcement proves the “absurdity” of the Pentagon’s prosecution of Canadian terror suspect Omar Khadr, said his military lawyer.
Khadr, who was 15 when U. S. forces seized him in Afghanistan after a firefight in which he allegedly killed a U. S. soldier, faces war-crimes charges before the same commission. Lieut. William Kuebler has argued the U. S. Congress, in establishing the commission, never intended that it prosecute child soldiers who were bit players in the wider organization.
“All were allegedly involved in the 9-11 attacks,” Kuebler said of the six. “The contrast between these six and Omar Khadr could not be more stark. The government’s decision to prosecute real terrorists in its special terrorist tribunals highlights the absurdity of prosecuting Omar for acts allegedly committed as a 15- year-old child soldier in Afghanistan.”
An actual trial of the six could be far in the future, as the commission system has already faced numerous challenges to its legitimacy. The treatment of the detainees so far is also likely to become an issue. In addition to allegations that torture has been used in the interrogations of at least some of the accused, all but one of them were initially held in secret, overseas prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency until September 2006.
Most prominent of the group is Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who the U. S. says has confessed to planning not only 9-11 from “A to Z,” but numerous other attacks and the beheading of Wall Street Journal journalist Danny Pearl.
Hartmann alleges Mohammed proposed the concept of the attacks to Osama bin Laden as early as 1996, and obtained “approval and funding” from the al-Qaida leader to oversee the entire operation. This included training the hijackers “in all aspects of the operation” in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But Michael Hayden, the CIA director, admitted in testimony before a senate panel last week that Mohammed was one of three detainees subjected to waterboarding, a form of torture that simulates drowning. The CIA destroyed the tapes of those interviews - an act the U. S. Justice Department is currently investigating.
Another is Mohamed al Kahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker, who was denied entry to the United States on Aug. 4, 2001, on suspicion he sought to be an illegal immigrant. He was rounded up among many other foreigners in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo.
But once his suspected connection to 9-11 was discovered, former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized that he and a second Guantanamo detainee be subject to a “special” interrogation plan. The website MSBNC. com reported in November 2006, that senior officials with the Pentagon’s Criminal Investigation Unit said Kahtani was “unprosecutable” because of “what had been done to him.”
U. S. President George W. Bush created the military commission system in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, but legal challenges led to the U. S. Supreme Court’s
2006 ruling striking down the initial commission as illegal.
Congress’s Military Commissions Act of 2006 created the current body, but critics say it falls short of offering the same rights as civilian U. S. courts.
Hartmann said it will offer the same rights as U. S. soldiers accused of crimes.
“Every piece of evidence, every stitch of evidence, every whiff of evidence that goes to the finder of fact, to the jury, to the military tribunal, will be reviewed by the accused,” he said.
The commission appoints military lawyers for the accused, but they can retain their own civilian lawyers, as well. Many lawyers have come forward to represent pro bono the six other of the 275 detainees charged to date.
The eventual trial will take place at a special courtroom still being built in Guantanamo at a site called Camp Justice.
The other accused are: Ramzi Binalshibh, accused of being Mohammed’s lieutenant; Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek Bin ‘Attash, who allegedly ran an al-Qaida camp where two of the hijackers were trained; Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, who allegedly sent money to the hijackers; and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi, who allegedly helped provide the hijackers with money, as well as Western clothing, travellers’ cheques and credit cards. © Canwest News Service 2008
February 11th, 2008 | Category: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Afghanistan, Death Penalty, Detainee, Extraordinary Rendition, Ghost, Guantanamo, High Profile, Military Commission, Minor, Torture
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