'Guilty' 9/11 defendants face death penalty
The self-styled mastermind behind the September 11 terror attacks and four of his co-defendants face possible execution after telling a military judge at Guantanamo Bay that they wanted to plead guilty.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four others requested an “immediate hearing” to confess to their parts in the terror attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people more than seven years ago.
The request came during a pre-trial hearing yesterday where the men came face to face for the first time with a small group of relatives of the victims of the atrocity.
The judge, Army Colonel Stephen Henley, who was assigned to the case after the previous judge resigned for undisclosed reasons last month, read aloud a letter in which the five co-defendants said they “request an immediate hearing session to announce our confessions”.
The letter implied they wanted to plead guilty, but did not specify whether they would admit to any specific charges. It also said they wished to drop all previous defence motions.
Under questioning by the judge, Mohammed, who has already told interrogators he was the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, said he agreed with the letter.
Sporting a chest-length grey beard, Mohammed told the judge he did not trust him, his Pentagon-appointed lawyers or US president George Bush.
Speaking in English, Mohammed said: “I don’t trust you.”
Mohammed, a Pakistani, and four others – Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali – were charged earlier this year with conspiring with al-Qaida to kill civilians.
They face 2,973 counts of murder, one for each person killed when al-Qaida militants crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
Each is charged with conspiracy and separate offences including murder in violation of the law of war, hijacking, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism.
Four of the five – Mohammed, Binalshibh, bin Attash, and Ali – are also charged with hijacking the jets, which hit New York’s World Trade Centre towers and the Pentagon, and crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania.
The charges alleged a “long-term, highly sophisticated, organised plan by al-Qaida to attack the United States”, a spokesman for the US Department of Defence said in February, when the details were announced.
Mohammed said at his arraignment in June they would welcome execution as a path to martyrdom, but yesterday’s request to confess came as a shock to observers, including the victims’ families.
Alice Hoagland, of Redwood Estates, California, said she was there for her son Mark Bingham, believed to be one of the passengers who fought hijackers on the United flight that crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
She said the defendants’ announcement was “like a real bombshell to me”.
She told reporters she hoped US president-elect Barack Obama, “an even-minded and just man”, would ensure the five defendants were punished.
Mr Obama opposes the military commissions – as the Guantanamo trials are called - and has pledged to close the detention centre holding some 250 men soon after taking office next month.
