(Reuters) – Accused September 11 mastermind
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four suspected co-conspirators were ordered on Wednesday to stand trial before a Guantanamo war
crimes tribunal, the Pentagon said, a move that throws the politically charged case into the limelight in an election
year.
Mohammed is shown in this file photograph during his arrest on March 1, 2003. REUTERS/Courtesy U.S.News & World
Report/Files
Convictions on the most serious charges, which include terrorism, hijacking,
conspiracy and murder in violation of the law of war, could carry the death penalty.
The decision to move to trial in
a military court is the latest chapter in a decade-long political and legal battle over handling detainees. One of the most
contentious issues has been whether terrorism suspects like Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators should be tried in
civilian courts as criminals or before military courts as enemy combatants.
The trial will bring a deep examination of
the events leading up to 9/11, the deadliest attack ever carried out on U.S. soil and one that propelled the country into a
global war against al Qaeda and its affiliates.
The trial stands to be double-edged for President Barack Obama, who is
running for a second term in November. It will remind voters about the killing of long-fugitive al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden last year, a highlight of his presidency. But it could also draw attention to his failure to close the Guantanamo Bay
prison, which he had promised to do as a candidate in the 2008 election.
The official overseeing the Guantanamo
tribunals, retired Vice Admiral Bruce MacDonald, referred the case to a capital military commission on charges of terrorism,
hijacking aircraft, conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians and other counts, the Pentagon
said.
The case is fraught with controversy. All five defendants were held in secret CIA prisons before being sent to
Guantanamo in 2006. The CIA has acknowledged subjecting Mohammed to a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding
during his interrogation, and other defendants have said they were abused.
The tribunals, which have gone through
several revisions, ban the use of evidence gained through coercion, but critics say the hearsay rules are broad enough to
allow the introduction of second-hand information obtained through torture.
Asked on Wednesday about the decision to
proceed to trial, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “It has been more than 10 years since 9/11 … and the president is
committed to ensuring that those who were accused of perpetrating the attacks against the United States be brought to
justice.” Carney said Obama remained committed to closing the U.S. military facility in Cuba that houses high-risk terrorist suspects, blaming its continued operation
on “obstacles … from Congress.”
The prison at Guantanamo still holds 171 people, down from 252 when Obama took
office. The president had promised to close the facility by the end of his first year in office, but the deadline passed as
the administration struggled against the hard reality of finding other countries willing to take the
inmates.
Mohammed, who is Pakistani, and the other four are accused of planning and executing the September 11, 2001,
hijacked airliner attacks that killed 2,976 people in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The attacks were
part of a conspiracy involving al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other members of his group.
The five were initially
charged in the Guantanamo war crimes court in 2008. Obama, then a candidate for president, opposed the use of the tribunals.
After his election, Attorney General Eric Holder moved to have the case transferred to a federal court in New York and the
military charges were dropped.
The effort to try the case in civilian court ran into stiff resistance in Congress and
in New York, where officials warned about the security threat and said the cost of protecting the venue could be as much as
$1 billion. Congress eventually blocked the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to the United States for trial or any other
reason.
One year ago, on April 4, 2011, the administration abandoned efforts to try the case before a civilian court
near the site of the World Trade Center attack, as Obama had promised, and shifted the case back to a military tribunal at
Guantanamo.
BLAMES LAWMAKERS
Holder blamed lawmakers for the policy reversal, saying their decision to block
funding for prosecuting the September 11 suspects in a New York court had forced the administration to move back to a
military trial.
Representative Buck McKeon, Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, welcomed the
decision to try the group before a military commission at Guantanamo, saying it was time for “judgment to be passed and
long-delayed justice to be done.”
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The American Civil Liberties Union
condemned Wednesday’s decision to proceed with a military case, saying the administration was “making a terrible mistake by
prosecuting the most important terrorism trials of our time in a second-tier system of justice.”
“Whatever verdict
comes out of the Guantanamo military commissions will be tainted by an unfair process and the politics that wrongly pulled
these cases from federal courts, which have safely and successfully handled hundreds of terrorism trials,” ACLU Executive
Director Anthony Romero said.
The decision to refer the case to a tribunal means the five will have to be arraigned
before a military judge at Guantanamo within 30 days of their formal notification that the case will go to trial.
Notification is expected to happen on Thursday, a Pentagon spokesman said.
The case has been referred to a joint
trial, meaning the five will be tried together. In addition to Mohammed, the accused are Walid bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh,
Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi.
James Connell, the civilian attorney for Aziz Ali, said in a
statement that his client, a nephew of Mohammed, did not kill or plan to kill anyone and should not face the death
penalty.
Ali’s attorneys have said in the past that he was a computer worker in Dubai who sent money to the hijackers
and was not a direct participant in planning the attacks.
“Mr. Ali would not be eligible for the death penalty if this
case were tried in federal court,” Connell said. “This attempt to expand the reach of the death penalty to people who neither
killed nor planned to kill is another example of the second-class justice of the military commissions.”
(Additional
reporting by Jane Sutton in
Miami, Laura MacInnis, Alister Bull, Susan Cornwell and Jeremy Pelofsky in
Washington; Editing by Mary
Milliken and Cynthia
Osterman)