|
WASHINGTON: Five alleged terrorists accused of
plotting the September 11, 2001 attacks are to appear in public for
the first time in years on Thursday at a military hearing in the US
prison at Guantánamo Bay.
Seven years after some 3,000
people were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center in New
York and the Pentagon, there are lingering doubts that the trial
will ever get fully underway.
But Khaled Sheikh Mohammed,
considered the brains of the attacks, along with alleged
co-conspirators Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Wallid bin
Attash and Mustapha al-Hawsawi, all face the death penalty if
convicted by the military commission on the US military base in
Cuba.
They are due to appear before the
judge, Marine Corps Colonel Ralph Kohlmann, to be arraigned on the
charges against them which include conspiracy, murder, attacking
civilians, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction
of property, terrorism, and material support for terrorism.
All were arrested between 2002
and 2003 and were transferred to the controversial base in 2006,
allegedly after spending years in secret CIA prisons.
The trials have already been
overshadowed by the controversy surrounding their arrests and
whether so-called confessions published by the US military were
exacted under torture.
“You can expect that the
defense is going to be making strong arguments that the evidence the
government wants to use against these individuals is tainted,”
Geoffrey Corn, a professor at South Texas College of Law who has
provided legal counsel to the defense, told Agence France-Presse.
“If it was torture it is
inadmissible. If it is not torture but coercion, then the judge has
to make a decision. How does a judge define what is torture and
forced coercion?”
Earlier this year the CIA
admitted that Sheikh Mohammed was subjected to a technique of
simulated drowning known as “waterboarding” which critics have
denounced as torture.
But another legal expert hit back
that the case against the five is solid, even though none of the 19
hijackers who seized four planes on the day to use as weapons
survived to give evidence.
“The evidence against the five
defendants is overwhelming. It does not depend on any evidence that
has been obtained under duress,” said legal analyst David Rivkin,
a former counsel to former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.
Bush.
“They have all acknowledged
what they have done after being interrogated by the so-called clean
teams,” he told Agence France-Presse, referring to FBI agents who
were judged not to have used excessive force in their interviews.
Sheikh Mohammed, 43, has claimed
to be behind not just the September 11 attacks but also some 30
operations against the West in the past decade, according to
transcripts of his interrogation released by the Pentagon.
His appearance on Thursday will
be the first time he has been seen in public since his capture in
Pakistan on March 1, 2003.
Binalshibh has refused to take
part in the administrative process, while both Attash and Hawsawi
have essentially admitted the charges against them. Ali however has
denied all the allegations.
“It is my sense that all are
quite eager to testify as to who they are and why they have done the
things they have done on the stand,” said Rivkin.
And he added that the hearings
were “enormously symbolic and important, and also important for
the cause of justice. The fundamental aspect of any justice system
is the ability to bring a sense of closure to the victims and their
families and to the society at large.”
--AFP
|
