|
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba: The alleged mastermind of the September 11,
2001 attacks and two co-conspirators defiantly sought Thursday to be
sentenced to death at a US military hearing here, saying they had
long sought martyrdom.
“This is what I want, I’m looking to be a
martyr for long time,” Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti of
Pakistani origin, told the hearing at the US naval base in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Sheikh Mohammed, 43, has claimed to have been
behind not just the September 11 attacks blamed on the al-Qaeda
network, but also some 30 operations against the West in the decade
before his arrest, according to transcripts of his interrogation
released by the Pentagon.
His appearance on Thursday along with four other
alleged co-plotters was the first time he had been seen in public
since his capture in Pakistan on March 1, 2003. All five will face
death penalty if convicted.
Two other defendants, Wallid bin Attash and
Ramzi Binalshibh, also said they were not afraid of death and like
Sheikh Mohammed, sought to throw out their legal teams.
“I’ve been seeking martyrdom for five years.
I tried to get a visa for 9/11, but I could not,” said Binalshibh,
who was a member of the German-based Hamburg cell of al-Qaeda that
planned and then carried out the attacks.
A native of Yemen, Binalshibh shared a Hamburg
apartment with Mohammed Atta, a key leader of the 19 hijackers who
took over four planes on the day to use as weapons, but unlike Atta
and the others, he was unable to get a US visa.
“I understand that I will be killed for the
sake of God, but I don’t understand that I’m guilty. I refuse
that I am guilty. And I know that if I am killed, I will be killed
in the sake of God,” added Binalshibh, 36.
The only one of the five to wear a chain linked
to a ring in the ground, Binalshibh at times appeared agitated as
well as amused during the hearing.
Attash, a Saudi of Yemeni origin, aged around
29, also rounded on the court officials saying: “You killed my
brother who was younger than me during the war, and this is my wish
to be in your hands.”
The three along with Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and
Mustapha al-Hawsawi have been charged over the attacks on the World
Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon which killed some 3,000
people.
-- AFP
|
