US drops 9/11 'hijacker' charges

The Pentagon has dropped charges against a man alleged to have been the "20th hijacker" in the September 11 attacks, his US military defence lawyer has said.

Mohammed al-Qahtani, who is being held at a US military jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was one of six men facing murder and war crimes charges for their alleged roles in the 2001 attacks.

Bryan Broyles, al-Qahtani's military lawyer, said on Monday that Susan Crawford, the convening authority for military commissions, dismissed the charges against al-Qahtani on Friday.

The charges were dismissed "without prejudice," meaning they could be filed again at some point in the future.

Crawford is proceeding with charges against five other people accused of having a role in the attacks, Broyles said.

Prosecutors are to seek the death penalty for the men if they are found to be guilty.

Military tribunal

Authorities allege al-Qahtani was only prevented from taking part in the attacks because he was denied entry to the US by an immigration official.

The US military said that he had no return ticket and Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker, was waiting for him.

Officials previously said al-Qahtani had been subject to harsh interrogation authorised by Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary.

The five defendants who are still facing charges include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is alleged to have masterminded the attacks in 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The five charged men are set to be arraigned before a military tribunal at Guantanamo, where the US holds about 270 men on "suspicion of terrorism" or links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Human rights organisations have criticised the rule that allows US judges to decide whether to allow evidence that may have been obtained under "coercion".

US authorities have acknowledged that Mohammed was "waterboarded" - an interrogation method designed to simulate the sensation of drowning - by CIA interrogators.

Al-Qahtani last year retracted a confession he said he made after he was tortured at Guantanamo.

In a written statement he said was beaten, restrained for long periods in uncomfortable positions, threatened with dogs, exposed to loud music and freezing temperatures and stripped nude in front of female military staff.

Via Al Jazeera.

Profile: Key 9/11 suspects

Six prisoners being held by the US in Guantanamo Bay are to face charges over their alleged involvement in the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US.

The following profiles and what is known of the allegations against the suspects are compiled from BBC and news agency reports and information released by the Pentagon and US intelligence officials.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Ramzi Binalshibh
Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi
Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali
Walid Bin Attash
Mohammed al-Qahtani

Via BBC.


Comment:

It will be interesting to see how they'll plan their respective defenses (and they will defend themselves; to waste our time if for no other reason). KSM and Ramzi bin al-Shibh are both dead men; all the prosecution needs to do is play the jury the Al Jazeera documentary they appeared in.

As for al-Hawsawi, the his defense thus far seems to be, yes, he did know virtually everyone involved, and yes, Ramzi bin al-Shibh did tell him on September 10 to flee to Pakistan because a huge attack was about to occur, and yes he did receive large sums of money from the hijackers right before the attack, but that doesn't mean that he was involved in any way. I mean, who hasn't received $17,860 from a group of known terrorists? I'm not sure what he has to say about all the al-Qaeda expense accounts and payroll lists he was captured with. He was probably "holding" them for a "friend."

Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, on the other hand, may well be innocent. Going by the evidence raised at his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, it appears that he may have just been used by his uncle, KSM, and had no knowledge of the plot itself. This is strongly supported by the fact that when he left the country right before 9/11 due to his work visa being revoked, he was caught off-guard and didn't even have time to pack. Also, much of the government's evidence is either classified or ridiculous (e.g. he was in frequent contact with his uncle). It also seems kind of peculiar that the plot would have two head financiers. This will be an interesting trial to follow.

Walid bin Attash appears to have been a mid-level administrator involved in the Embassy Bombings and the U.S.S. Cole attack. He has already confessed, so his trial should be fairly short.

Muhammad al-Qahtani's case is also tricky. He was tortured pretty extensively once his identity became known, causing the DoD to call him "unprosecutable." On the other hand, he was definitely a member of al-Qaeda, and tried to enter the States shortly before 9/11 with a one-way ticket, and he probably wasn't sight-seeing. Also, if I recall, he is named as the 20th hijacker in KSM's confession.

We will have to see.

Six men face 9/11 charges

The US government has announced charges against six Guantanamo Bay detainees over the September 11 attacks, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The charges are the first from the court at Guantanamo alleging direct involvement in the 2001 attacks and the first in which the US has sought the death penalty.

"These charges allege a long-term, highly sophisticated, organised plan by al-Qaeda to attack the US," said Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann. In a transcript released by the Pentagon last year, Mohammed was quoted as saying he planned the attacks in New York and Washington in 2001 and others.

Last week the US admitted it had used the controversial waterboarding interrogation method to extract Mohammed's confession. The procedure is widely considered to be torture and human rights groups have strongly condemned it. The military judge hearing the cases would decide on the admissability of evidence obtained under duress, Hartmann said. The full charges against the six are conspiracy, murder in violation of the laws of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property, terrorism, and material support for terrorism.

Military tribunals

Apart from Mohammed, the other men include Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002. The rest are Mohammed al-Qahtani, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi and a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Baluchi's assistant Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, from Saudi Arabia, and Waleed bin Attash, reportedly from Yemen. The tribunals at the US military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are the first US war tribunals since World War Two. They were established after the attacks to try non-US captives whom the Bush administration considers "enemy combatants" not entitled to the legal protections granted to soldiers and civilians. However, if convicted and sentenced to death, any execution could take years to carry out as the sentence would have to be examined by civilian appeals courts, the New York Times reported. Hartmann said the trials would be "as completely open as possible" and that the defendants and their legal teams would even see the classified evidence against them. "There will be no secret trials. Every piece of evidence, every stitch of evidence, every whiff of evidence that goes to the finder of fact, to the jury, to the military tribunal, will be reviewed by the accused," he said. About 275 detainees remain at the facility, about 80 of whom the US hopes to try. Clive Stafford Smith, a human rights lawyer who has represented Guantanamo detainees, told Al Jazeera that neither military tribunals nor the death penalty should be considered in these cases. "Mohammed has announced he wants to be a martyr and to execute him merely makes him a martyr and fulfills his wishes," he said. "I think the United States is going to loose an awful lot of support from its allies in the West who are very strongly opposed to the death penalty."

'Confession'

Mohammed, a Pakistani national of Kuwaiti descent, was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003 and handed over to the United States. He is alleged to have been the "Number Three" in the al-Qaeda network after Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri.

Mohammed is reported to have also confessed to the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Centre, the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, and an attempt to down two American aeroplanes using shoe bombs. The alleged al-Qaeda operations chief is also said to have confessed to the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in February 2002. "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," he was quoted in the Pentagon transcript as saying. However, Mohammed's reported confessions remain controversial after the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said that he, along with two other al-Qaeda suspects, had been waterboarded, an interrogation "technique" which simulates drowning. The other two suspects were were Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Almost 3,000 people died in the September 11 attacks, in which 19 hijackers crashed four planes into the World Trader Center in New York City, the Pentagon building in Washington DC and a field in the state of Pennsylvania.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

Finally. The timing of this probably has something to do with the coming election, but I don't care. It's high time justice is done.

The list of defendants is interesting. I would expect Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, as well as the other "twentieth hijacker", Muhammad al-Qahtani, but I was not familiar with the other three. And where is Abu Zubaydah? I somehow suspect he's being saved for later on in the campaign, but it could be they just don't want to give him up yet.

In the coming days I plan on posting profiles on each of these men.

Also, my replacement laptop should be arriving sometime today.