September 11 suspects to be tried in New York
40 mins ago
<cite class="auth">
Jeremy Pelofsky and James Vicini</cite>
The accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks and four other top terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay will be sent to New York to be tried in a criminal court, a U.S. government official said on Friday, the first major step to closing the controversial prison.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (above) and the other men were being prosecuted in military commissions at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, but U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to close the prison by mid-January and move some of the cases to U.S. criminal courts. "I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it. My administration will insist on it," Obama said in Tokyo during a trip through Asia. In addition to claiming responsibility for the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people, Mohammed has said he was responsible for numerous other attacks and that in 2002 he beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. One administration official said the men would be charged with crimes related to the 2001 attacks. At least five other Guantanamo detainees will be tried in revamped military tribunals, including the man accused of organizing the 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen, Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, another administration official said. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed and 47 wounded in that attack. The other four to be tried by military commissions are accused of involvement with al Qaeda and other attacks. They include a young Canadian, Omar Khadr, who was captured in Afghanistan and is accused of killing a U.S. soldier during a firefight.
CLOSING GUANTANAMO
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was expected to announce the decisions at 11:00 a.m. (4:00 p.m. British time) on Friday. He faced a court-imposed deadline on Monday to make a decision. As one of his first acts after taking office in January, Obama pledged that by January 22, 2010 he would close the camp, which had become a symbol of harsh treatment of detainees in former President George W. Bush's war on terrorism around the world.
But he and his team have faced numerous political and diplomatic hurdles and they have admitted it may be hard to meet the deadline. Obama's top lawyer, Gregory Craig, who was charged with leading the White House effort to close Guantanamo, announced his resignation on Friday following reports of dissatisfaction within the administration over his management of the Guantanamo policy. There are 215 detainees at the detention camp, which was set up in early 2002 after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Trials in New York, the site of the 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center's twin towers, may provoke strong public reaction. But the city has experience of trials of major terrorism suspects. Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Muslim cleric, was convicted in 1995 for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks after a heavily guarded trial in a Lower Manhattan court not far from the World Trade Centre site.
"WATERBOARDING"
The four other September 11 suspects being held at Guantanamo are Walid bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi. It was not clear where the suspects will be held while awaiting trial, but some have suggested the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig in South Carolina. While in U.S. custody, Mohammed was subjected 183 times to "waterboarding," which simulates drowning by pouring water over someone's face while they are was restrained. Human rights groups say waterboarding is torture, and the use of that interrogation method could hurt prosecutors' case. Among the barriers to closing Guantanamo is deep resistance among U.S. allies to take detainees who have been cleared of connections to terrorism. Some of Obama's political opponents in the United States do not want the trials held on U.S. soil. Some Republicans argue Guantanamo already has the facilities to try and imprison the terrorism suspects. They also have said communities that would house the prisoners in the United States could become targets for attacks. But the Obama administration and fellow Democrats counter that the U.S. courts and prisons have handled scores of terrorism suspects previously and they must close Guantanamo because it has tarnished the United States' reputation abroad. The White House pressed Congress to overhaul the military commissions to address concerns raised by civil rights groups. Lawmakers ultimately barred the use of confessions from harsh interrogations and made it tougher to use hearsay evidence.
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan in Tokyo, Editing by Arshad Mohammed and David Storey)
