Alleged 9/11 Attackers To Get Guantanamo Hearing

June 4, 2008

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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.

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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.

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“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 “water-boarding” 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 ex-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 AFP, referring to FBI agents who were judged not to have used excessive force in their interviews.

Sheikh Mohammed, 43, has claimed to have been 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.

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His appearance on Thursday will be the first time he has been seen in public since his capture in Pakistan on March 1, 2003.

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The five defendants will initially have the chance to plead guilty or not to the charges. Some may decide they do not want to take part in any further hearings.

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