Jeremy Pelofsky and James Vicini
Reuters
WASHINGTON: The accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks and four other suspects will be sent to New York and prosecuted in a court near where the World Trade Center once stood, the US government said on Friday, as it took a step toward closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and the others had been facing trials in military commissions at the US naval base in Cuba, but US President Barack Obama has pledged to move some cases to US criminal courts and close the prison by mid-January.
Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo, a symbol for critics abroad of harsh US treatment of prisoners, prompted huge opposition from Republicans and fellow Democrats, who fear moving the suspects to the sites in the United States could make them a magnet for attacks.
US Attorney General Eric Holder, announcing the decision to move the September 11 suspects, expressed confidence that the cases against them were strong. He said he was not worried that their trials would be impaired by the fact that suspects like Mohammad had been harshly interrogated.
While in US custody, Mohammad 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.
“I am confident in the ability of our courts to provide these defendants a fair trial, just as they have for over 200 years,” Holder told reporters.
There were mixed reactions in New York city, where some people were angry at having the men put on trial in the city traumatized by the hijacked-plane attacks eight years ago while others voiced relief that justice may soon be done.
“I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad 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.
Civil rights advocates hailed the decision to move some of the cases to traditional US criminal courts.
But House of Representatives Republican leader John Boehner said Friday’s announcement was “irresponsible” and “puts the interests of liberal special-interest groups before the safety and security of the American people.”
In May, House Republicans introduced legislation they called the “Keep Terrorists out of America Act” aimed at stopping the transfer or release of terrorists held at the Guantanamo into the United States.
Five other Guantanamo prisoners, including the alleged mastermind of a 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen, Abdel-Rahim al-Nashiri, and a young Canadian accused of killing a US soldier in Afghanistan, will be tried in revamped military commissions, the Justice Department said.
Holder on Friday repeated earlier statements that it would be difficult to meet the January deadline that Obama had placed on closing Guantanamo.
He said the New York trial would take place at a court a few blocks from where the World Trade Center twin towers stood before they were felled by hijacked planes in 2001.
Almost 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon were killed in the attacks that day.
In addition to claiming responsibility for the September 11 attacks, Mohammad has said he was responsible for numerous other attacks and that in 2002 he beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.
Holder said that he would authorize prosecutors to seek the death penalty against the five accused of the September 11 attacks and that they would be held at a federal detention facility in New York.
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