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9/11 Suspects to be Tried at Guantanamo, Not NYC
Topic Started: Apr 4 2011, 11:09 AM (528 Views)
shure
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9/11 Suspects to be Tried at Guantanamo, Not NYC
Monday, Apr 4, 2011 | Updated 11:45 AM EDT
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/911-Suspects-to-be-Tried-at-Guantanamo-119184929.html

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Khalid Sheik Mohammed (center inset) and his four alleged co-conspirators will be tried in military court at Guantanamo Bay for their alleged involvement in the plot to attack the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001.


NBC News has learned that the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks will be tried in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay and not in federal court in Manhattan, just blocks from the World Trade Center site.

The Justice Department was expected to make the announcement Monday.

The Obama administration's announcement in 2009 that it would seek to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other four suspects in civilian court was met with fierce opposition from many elected officials, families of victims and those who live and work in Lower Manhattan, who would have had to contend with several rings of heavy security for the months of the trial.

The decision to try them at a U.S. naval base in Guantanamo instead is a victory for Mayor Bloomberg.

The mayor had supported the trial in New York at first, but then reversed himself and came out against it, citing the cost of providing security would be too much for the city to bear. He had put the figure at $200 million a year, but never provided details on what that included.

The mayor had no immediate comment.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had also spoken out against trying the suspects in New York, saying at one point it would increase the threat of another terror attack.

The federal government had promised it would pay back the city for security costs, but would not have compensated business owners or others who would have been inconvenienced by the trial.

After pressure and opposition from Bloomberg and others, Attorney General Eric Holder shelved the plan last year, saying the White House was reviewing the decision.

Raising security concerns, conservative Republicans staunchly oppose trials in civilian courts inside the United States for terrorism suspects, saying they should be tried instead before military commissions at Guantanamo Bay.

The Obama administration had said that both civilian courts and military commissions should be available for such trials, pointing to the fact that dozens of terrorism-related cases have been handled in civilian courts.

Critics of the administration's initial approach also argued that trials in civilian courts run a greater risk of acquittals than in military courts because of rules of evidence and rights afforded to suspects.









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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vz5eNxLVgY






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Source: 9-11 suspects to face military commission
Date: Monday Apr. 4, 2011 1:53 PM ET
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20110404/911-suspects-military-commission-110404/

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In this March 1, 2003 picture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is seen shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan. (AP Photo)


WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has yielded to political opposition has decided in the face of severe political opposition to refer avowed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged henchmen for trial by the system of military commissions rather than to a civilian federal court in New York, a federal law enforcement official said Monday.

After months of delay, the administration finally backed off Attorney General Eric Holder's November 2009 announcement that the five would be tried in a courthouse just blocks from where the World Trade Center stood in downtown Manhattan before it was attacked and destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.

That announcement had created intense political opposition among Republicans and ultimately even among some Democrats, particularly Democrats from New York.

The official said it will be a decision for the U.S. military to whether the island prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the five are held, will be the site for trial or whether the five will be tried together or separately.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity about the switch, which Holder was expected to announce at an afternoon news conference.

At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney referred questions about the decision to the Justice Department, where Holder was scheduled to make an announcement after Carney's daily briefing. But at one point during the questioning, Carney answered "yes," when asked whether Obama agreed with Holder's decision.

Republicans wasted no time Monday in criticizing the delay.

"It's unfortunate that it took the Obama administration more than two years to figure out what the majority of Americans already know: that 9/11 conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not a common criminal; he's a war criminal," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas.

Republican critics have roundly assailed the administration, first for the decision in late 2009 to try the men in New York City, then for a long delay in making a decision whether to have them face military commission justice instead.

One important senator, Republican Lindsey Graham, said in November he believed he had the votes in the Senate to block Mohammed from a civilian court.

"I think it is a big mistake to criminalize the war, to take someone you've held under the law of war as an enemy combatant for six or seven years, then put them in civilian court," Graham said in November. "It is a disaster waiting to happen."

The four alleged co-conspirators are Waleed bin Attash, a Yemeni who allegedly ran an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan; Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who allegedly helped find flight schools for the hijackers; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, accused of helping nine of the hijackers travel to the United States and sending them $120,000 for expenses and flight training, and Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, a Saudi accused of helping the hijackers with money, Western clothing, traveller's checks and credit cards.

Mohammed allegedly proposed the concept for the Sept. 11 attacks to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden as early as 1996, obtained funding for the attacks from bin Laden, oversaw the operation and trained the hijackers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mohammed was born in Pakistan's Baluchistan province and raised in Kuwait.

Holder's earlier decision that Mohammed would be tried in New York was initially embraced by city officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said: "It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site where so many New Yorkers were murdered."

New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly called it appropriate and announced his police department was ready to meet any security challenge.

But an avalanche of criticism from Republicans, including former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, led a chorus of opposition in a place where there was virtually no opposition to trying major terrorism defendants prior to Sept. 11, 2001, even though some defendants had spoken of targeting judges and the FBI headquarters in lower Manhattan.

With the city still trying to recover from the hit it took with the collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008, fears that a major trial would harm real estate values on choice land in lower Manhattan and create high expenses for the city's police department seemed to be a deciding factor in getting Bloomberg and others to change their minds.

By early 2010, city officials had estimated it would cost $216 million for the first year after Mohammed and four others were brought to Manhattan from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and $200 million annually every year as long as they remained. They said they needed to defend against the possibility the trial might inspire other terror attacks.

They cited the cost of New York City Police Department patrols but never got specific about those costs and never explained why the detention and trial of others like a defendant who was convicted last year in the deadly 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa did not drive up police costs considerably as well.

As politicians bickered over the issue, administrators at the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan and at the U.S. Marshals Service prepared for the possibility of a trial. At one point, there was discussion of broadcasting the trial on closed circuit television to a large enough venue that family members of Sept. 11 victims could watch the proceedings.

As security at the courthouse was tightened in anticipation of the trial, Bloomberg turned against the possibility in late January 2010.

"There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City," Bloomberg said.













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KSM Flashback -


_____________


Detainee says he lied to CIA in harsh interrogations
June 16, 2009|Julian E. Barnes and Greg Miller
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/16/nation/na-cia-detainee16

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, told the U.S. military that he made up stories, documents show. The news could intensify the debate over interrogation practices.


Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he had lied to the CIA after being abused, according to documents made public Monday. The claim is likely to intensify the debate over whether harsh interrogation techniques generated accurate information.

Mohammed made the assertion during hearings at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was transferred in 2006 after being held at secret CIA sites since his capture in 2003.

"I make up stories," Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation probably administered by the CIA concerning the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "Where is he? I don't know. Then, he torture me," Mohammed said of his interrogator. "Then I said, 'Yes, he is in this area.' "

Mohammed also appeared to say that he had fingered people he did not know as being Al Qaeda members in order to avoid abusive treatment. Although there is no way to corroborate his statements, Mohammed is one of the militants whom the CIA repeatedly subjected to the simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The newly released information could amplify calls for the Obama administration to make public more details about the treatment of terrorism suspects or allow a broader inquiry into the George W. Bush administration's interrogation policies. Monday's disclosure represented a rare allegation by a detainee that he had lied while being subjected to harsh practices.

A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, said Mohammed's statements raised questions about the effectiveness of the CIA's interrogation program.

"It underscores the unreliability of statements obtained by torture," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project.

The CIA, however, took issue with the description of its interrogation techniques as torture and the assertion that they were not useful.

"The CIA plainly has a very different take on its past interrogation practices -- what they were and what they weren't -- and on the need to protect properly classified national security information," said Paul Gimigliano, an agency spokesman.











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The Sad Defeat of Our Constitution
by Kristen Breitweiser Posted: 04/ 4/11 05:10 PM ET
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-breitweiser/military-commission-9-11-_b_844661.html

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Today I was given two hours of "advance notice" regarding DOJ's decision to not prosecute the remaining alleged 9/11 conspirators in an open court of law. According to DOJ's statement, the remaining individuals will be sent to military tribunals.

I recognize that there are many, many other things for Americans to be upset with today, but I hope everyone can take a second to contemplate this decision and recognize what it says about President Obama, the Department of Justice, and the United States.

As for the Department of Justice, it shows their inability to prosecute individuals who are responsible for the death of 3,000 people on the morning of 9/11. Apparently our Constitution and judicial system -- two of the very cornerstones that make America so great and used to set such a shining example to the rest of the world -- are not adequately set up to respond to or deal with the aftermath of terrorism. To me, this is a startling and dismal acknowledgment that perhaps Osama Bin Laden did, in fact, win on the morning of 9/11. And chillingly, I wonder whether it wasn't just the steel towers that were brought down and incinerated on 9/11, but the yellowed pages of our U.S. Constitution, as well.

And what does it say about the solemn capabilities of our Department of Justice if it is left to "subcontract out" its duties and responsibilities to the Department of Defense? We should all think about that scary notion for a bit. But, perhaps more disturbingly recognize that it is not occurring under the tutelage of Bush and Cheney, rather it is coming at the hands of Obama.

At least when President Bush was in office, he was candid about his feelings regarding the alleged 9/11 conspirators in our custody. He didn't care about them. He allowed them to be tortured. He was fine letting them rot in the heat of Guantanamo for all of eternity. They were less than human to him and he certainly was never going to afford them the benefits of our U.S. Constitution or the Geneva Conventions. That was President Bush. Whether you agreed or disagreed with him, you, at least, knew where he stood. And you could, like it or not, rely on his word.

For the past two years, it's been President Obama in the Oval Office. Quite early on in his presidency, Obama invited the 9/11 families to the White House to discuss 9/11-related issues. During this meeting in Feb '09 the topic of closing Guantanamo and the use of Article 3 courts to prosecute the remaining alleged 9/11 conspirators was discussed. Many of us were incredibly relieved to learn that as a matter of course President Obama was going to shut down Guantanamo and support the open prosecution of the alleged 9/11 conspirators. He gave us -- the various widows and children at the meeting -- his golden word. He shook our hands. He smiled broadly. He posed for pictures. (In fact, several weeks later many of the widows even received hand signed courtesy copies of these photos from Obama -- a nice touch. I did not receive such a photo.)

It's been almost ten years now since my husband was killed. My daughter has gone from a 2-year-old to a 12-year-old. Our country has started two -- and now maybe three -- pointless, misguided, costly wars. And if it wasn't already difficult enough to accept that Osama Bin Laden will probably never be caught or held accountable, now I have to swallow the fact that I will never see constitutional justice for the handful of individuals we actually hold in custody. In short, justice in a court of law for the murder of my husband and 3,000 others will never come.

I suppose in life timing is everything. To me, as a lawyer and a 9/11 widow, DOJ's announcement today acknowledges the sad defeat of our U.S. Constitution when it comes to 9/11. How truly tragic in my eyes. And you would think that a man who was once a constitutional law professor might feel the same way. Yet, not so much for President Barack Obama who has chosen this great day to announce his billion-dollar campaign for re-election. His slogan asking us to "join in" by writing him a check.

First, I've never been much of an "in"-sider. Second, I truly wonder how you can trust a leader who carries no compunction to keep his promises or his word -- whether those words and promises were made in support of gay rights, to not start or perpetuate illegal/useless/costly military campaigns (or wars), in support of environmental causes even to the detriment of big business, to put an immediate end to torture and unlawful detainment, to rein in the bloat and greed of Wall Street, to oppose gun control, or to correct the broad overreach of a previous administration.

But perhaps most pointedly, if you can't trust what a man says to a group of widows and children, then what words and promises of his can you trust?

So President Obama, am I IN? Will you be receiving my check?

Hell no.

Because I'm tired of gambling on your hope, believing in your promises, and being thrown under your bus.









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