GUANTÁNAMO – The Guantanámo war crimes court descended into chaos yesterday with accused 9/11 plotters disrupting proceedings while US government lawyers debated whether an administrative hiccup had left them facing any charges at all.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the 9/11 hijacked aircraft plot, tried unsuccessfully to banish all Americans from his defence table in the courtroom at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and complained when the judge asked him to limit his comments.
“This is terrorism, not court. You don’t give us opportunity to talk,” Mohammed told the judge, Col Stephen Henley.
Mohammed complained when a prosecutor characterised the charges against him and four co-defendants as the “murder” of nearly 3,000 innocent men, women and children.
But Mohammed, who has repeatedly acknowledged his guilt on charges that could lead to his execution, later told the court: “We don’t care about the capital punishment . . . we are doing jihad for the cause of God.”
Defendant Ramzi Binalshibh, whose mental competency to act as his own attorney is the subject of an ongoing challenge, told the court: “We did what we did and we are proud of this. We are proud of 9/11.”
Problems with the Arabic-English interpretation and outbursts from the defendants punctuated what is widely expected to be the last week of hearings in the special Guantánamo tribunals established by the Bush administration to try non-US captives on terrorism charges.
President-elect Barack Obama has said he will close the prison at Guantánamo and thinks the trials should be moved to regular US courts. Transition team members have hinted Obama might issue an order freezing the trials shortly after he becomes commander in chief of the US military.
But the immediate question facing the Guantánamo judges was whether the defendants still faced any charges.
The Bush administration appointee overseeing the tribunals, Susan Crawford, quietly dropped charges in all the pending cases in December and refiled them in early January. It was a technical procedure aimed at updating jury pools.
Defence lawyers argued that the move had the effect of nullifying all the previous rulings, restarting the trial clock and requiring that the defendants be arraigned again. Col Henley ruled that the charges stood and the hearings could continue. – (Reuters)