Terror trial may last years
Five accused turn arraignment into 13-hour standoff
WASHINGTON — The trial of the five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks could go on “for years”, lawyers for both the defence and prosecution said Sunday.
The predictions came a day after the alleged ringleader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and four codefendants turned their arraignment at a Guantanamo Bay war-crimes tribunal into a 13-hour standoff. The accused appeared intent on frustrating and delaying the process by refusing to answer questions.
Brig.-gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor, said he fully expected the defence to file a barrage of motions complaining that the Guantanamo legal process was unfair and unconstitutional. The civilian trial of another Sept. 11 conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, took four years.
The trial date for the five accused, who face the death penalty if convicted of 2,976 counts of murder in the 2001 U.S. terrorist attacks, is officially set for May 2013.
However, James Connell, for the defence, said that date was only a “placeholder” until a more realistic timetable could be set.
The trial has been criticized by human-rights groups and former military lawyers for being too secretive and loaded in favour of the prosecution.
The accused men were kept for several years in CIA ‘black’ sites without legal rights and subjected to torture.
Mohammed was “waterboarded” 183 times during the three years he was held in secret CIA prisons after his 2003 capture in Pakistan. He was eventually transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.
He was also deprived of sleep for seven days in a row, while his alleged coplotters were also subjected to harsh interrogation techniques.
Connell said the arraignment, in which the accused were given Pentagon-paid defence lawyers, offered an insight into the battle ahead.
“It demonstrates that this will be a long, hardfought but peaceful struggle against secrecy, torture and the misguided institution of the military commissions,” he said.