Key 9/11 Suspect To Be Tried In New York

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Guantánamo smoke detector/listening device revealed

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/1...listening.html

By CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@miamiherald.com

Across several days at Guantánamo last month, lawyers and the military jousted at the war court over whether it was possible to know that a listening device was affixed to the ceilings of the cells where defense attorneys meet the men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The overarching issue was attorney-client privilege and whether some secret agency was violating it by eavesdropping on lawyers meeting with their clients at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

Army and Navy officers testified that nobody was listening, and the equipment was a legacy from the days when the FBI controlled those particular cells.

But the question batted back and forth was whether the lawyers for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other men could’ve known the cell they were sitting in was bugged. Especially after, defense lawyer Cheryl Bormann said a prison guard told her it was a smoke detector.

Now the court of public opinion can decide.

The Pentagon on Monday released a photo of the device — identified in court as a Louroe AP-4 audio surveillance unit — a month after defense lawyers had it put into the court record. Pentagon rules give intelligence agencies 15 days to propose redactions of each and every war court exhibit, in case release might endanger national security.

Army Col. John Bogdan, the chief of the guard force who functions as the prison warden, testified on Feb. 13 that he got the impression it was a smoke detector, too. But, under questioning from case prosecutor Ed Ryan, Bogdan said that once he looked carefully he realized, “It was clearly a microphone.”

Prosecutor Clay Trivett also advised the judge: “It has a name on it and a simple Google search will show it’s a microphone.”

The meeting rooms at the prison camp site called Echo II should be bug free by the time the hearings resume next month at Guantánamo.

On Feb. 14, the judge agreed to a request to have the devices disabled. The judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, called them “the smoke detectors, for want of a better term.”

Not skipping a beat, prosecutor Ryan corrected Pohl: “The microphones that might look like a smoke detector, yes, Your Honor.”

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The 9/11 Hearings at Guantanamo Bay Have Been a Fiasco

http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/sh...-been-a-fiasco

By Daphne Eviatar
Senior Counsel Associated with Human Rights First's Law & Security Program
March 12, 2013

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith's case clearly belongs in a civilian U.S. court. It's unfortunate that some lawmakers have used this case to whip up hysteria and champion the failed experiment that is the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

I watched Abu Gaith's arraignment in the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Friday. It was a model of fairness and efficiency. In just 17 minutes, Judge Lewis Kaplan, a no-nonsense federal judge with decades of experience handling complex criminal conspiracy cases, read the charges against Abu Ghaith, explained his rights, assigned him lawyers, recorded his "not guilty" plea, and explained how the court would handle classified material. Abu Ghaith has reportedly already shared significant information with federal officers.

By contrast, the pretrial hearings of the five alleged masterminds of the 9/11 attacks taking place in Guantanamo Bay have been a fiasco. The arraignment alone took 13 hours and was like watching a circus. The defendants alternately ignored the bewildered military judge, yelled at him, prayed on the floor, fashioned paper airplanes, and threatened to commit suicide. It was hardly a proceeding that inspired confidence in the United States's ability to bring to justice the five alleged masterminds of the worst terrorist attack ever carried out on U.S. soil. I can only imagine how the victims' families felt watching this spectacle.

Since the 9/11 attacks, nearly 500 suspects—including 67 captured abroad—have been convicted in U.S. federal courts on terrorism-related charges. Many are serving life sentences. Alternatively, the Guantanamo Bay military commissions have convicted only seven people. Three of those have been released and two convictions have been reversed on appeal. Those rulings from a Washington, D.C. court of appeals call into question the legitimacy of any future prosecutions at Guantanamo for "material support" for terrorism or "conspiracy" to kill Americans—Abu Ghaith's alleged crime. In federal court, there is no question those charges could land him in prison for life.

U.S. national security is far better served by fair and serious prosecutions of alleged terrorists than by their indefinite detention on an offshore military base in contravention of the most basic principles of the U.S. Constitution and international law. Indefinite detention—or an illegitimate military commission trial—only breeds more enemies and more terrorism. That does us all an injustice.

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Vanishing files delay 9/11 hearings

http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/vani...6#.UXLSCYJa7Ak

April 17 2013 at 08:44pm
By Jane Sutton

MIAMI - Guantanamo war crimes prosecutions of five prisoners charged with plotting the September 11 hijacked planes attacks will be delayed by two months because of lost files caused by Pentagon computer problems, U.S. military officials said on Wednesday.

A weeklong pretrial hearing had been set to begin on Monday in the death penalty case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the attacks, and four alleged co-conspirators.

The judge overseeing the case postponed the hearing until June 17 at the request of defense lawyers who said three to four weeks' worth of their confidential work files had disappeared from Pentagon computer systems.

Prosecutors opposed the delay, but the judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, said a postponement was “in the interest of justice” under the circumstances.

A near-catastrophic server failure caused both defense lawyers and prosecutors to lose documents, said Army Colonel Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman.

Backup servers failed and the problem was further complicated because lawyers use one secure computer system in their Washington-area offices and another in their offices at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, he said.

The data disappeared as technicians tried to set up a means of automatically saving new documents and updates on both systems.

Pohl had already delayed pretrial hearings in another Guantanamo case for the same reason. Hearings had been scheduled this week in the case against Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who is charged with masterminding a bomb attack that killed 17 sailors aboard the USS Cole in 2000, but were postponed to June 11.

Navy Commander Walter Ruiz, an attorney who represents Saudi defendant Mustafa al Hawsawi in the 9/11 case, said some files had been restored but that 7 gigabytes of data - about three to four weeks worth of work - had been irretrievably lost since mid-February.

“None of the problems have been fixed,” Ruiz said. “It creates big hurdles.”

He said the lawyers had older versions of some documents but that more recent updates had disappeared. “We can't really tell if we have the accurate one until we go through it all,” he said.

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9/11 hearing delayed over hacked emails

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...785da7ab0d.431

(AFP) – WASHINGTON — A judge has delayed an upcoming hearing for five men accused of plotting the September 11 attacks due to suspicions that confidential defense emails were monitored, a lawyer said Wednesday.

The next preliminary hearing had been set to take place on April 22 at the US military base at Guantanamo. It was now scheduled for June 17-21, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

Lawyers for four of the accused had filed an emergency motion with presiding Judge Colonel James Pohl, seeking a delay in proceedings after revelations that defense emails and computer files had been compromised.

Walter Ruiz, a lawyer who represents Saudi defendant Mustafa al-Hawsawi, said Wednesday the "judge ruled that the defense request is reasonable on its face and that the interests of justice are served by granting a continuance."

In response to the defense's email surveillance claims, the military's chief defense counsel, Colonel Karen Mayberry, had ordered all attorneys representing detainees before the court to stop using their computers for confidential email and court documents.

Judge Pohl has delayed for the same reasons a hearing for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri of Saudi Arabia -- the man accused of masterminding the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole -- until mid-June.

Nashiri and the five men accused of plotting 9/11 face the death penalty.

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9/11 hearing delay sought over hacked emails

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...-hacked-emails

Lawyers for the five men accused of plotting the September 11 attacks asked a judge Thursday to delay an upcoming hearing after learning that emails with their clients had been monitored.

The surveillance was only the latest instance of compromised confidentiality at Guantanamo Bay, following revelations earlier this year that secret censors could block a public feed of court proceedings and that listening devices masked as smoke detectors were hidden in meeting rooms.

The next preliminary hearing for the September 11 defendants had been set to take place on April 22 at the US military base at Guantanamo.

James Connell, a lawyer for Pakistan's Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said he had filed an emergency motion to the military judge presiding over the case "to pause proceedings in the 9/11 trial after revelations that defense email communications and computer files have been compromised."

"This new disclosure is simply the latest in a series of revelations of courtroom monitoring, hidden surveillance devices and legal bin searches," he added.

Military commissions Judge Colonel James Pohl has delayed for the same reasons a hearing for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri of Saudi Arabia until mid-June. The hearing for the man accused of masterminding the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole had originally been set to begin Monday.

In response to the claims, the military's chief defense counsel, Colonel Karen Mayberry, ordered all attorneys representing detainees before the court to stop using their computers for confidential email and court documents.

The email surveillance "follows on the heels of the seizure of over 500,000 emails containing attorney-client privileged communications, as well as the loss of significant amount of defense work product contained in shared folders," said Commander Walter Ruiz, a lawyer for Saudi defendant Mustafa al-Hawsawi.

The order to stop using servers and emails, "essentially cripples our ability to operate," he said.

Nashiri and the five men accused of plotting 9/11 face the death penalty.

During the last 9/11 hearing, it was revealed that all conversations, including those whispered, between the accused and their lawyers could be heard by government monitors, whether they took place in the courtroom or in offices where they meet behind closed doors.

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Answers to key questions about Guantanamo detention center

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/0...ons-about.html

By Michael Doyle and Carol Rosenberg
McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Candidate Barack Obama pledged that he’d close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Easier said than done. As president, Obama has failed to shut down the facility he calls “expensive,” and “inefficient” and a “recruitment tool for terrorists.”

On April 30, Obama promised that he’ll “go back at” the Guantanamo problem, which frustrated him during his first term. His pledge raises many questions, some easier to answer than others.

Q: How long has the Guantanamo detention center been around?

A: Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced on Dec. 27, 2001, that some prisoners captured in Afghanistan would be held within the bounds of the 45-square-mile U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which the United States has occupied since 1903 under a lease that gives the U.S. rights “in perpetuity.” The first 20 detainees arrived Jan. 11, 2002.

Q: Why Guantanamo?

A: According to a report by the Constitution Project, a policy research center, Pentagon officials considered a variety of Pacific island and other remote locations for holding men detained during the so-called war on terrorism that President George W. Bush declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Officials eventually turned to Guantanamo, which previously had been used to house Haitians and Cubans who’d been picked up on the high seas trying to reach the United States.

Officials thought that in addition to providing limited access, which would ease security concerns, Guantanamo would keep the men held there from accessing U.S. federal courts since Guantanamo is part of Cuba. The Supreme Court eventually rejected that argument, however, and allowed the detainees to file habeas corpus petitions challenging their imprisonment.

Q: Who is being held at Guantanamo?

A: Currently, 166 men are detained there, more than half of them from Yemen. Three of the 166 have been convicted of crimes by a military commission, seven have been charged with crimes – including the five accused of conspiring in the 9/11 attacks – and 24 may face criminal charges. Of the remainder, 86 have been cleared for release or transfer to other countries and 46 face no criminal charges but a multi-agency review of their cases found them to be too dangerous to release. At its peak, in May 2003, the facility held about 680 men. The last prisoner arrived in March 2008.

Q: Why are they called detainees rather than prisoners?

A: The Pentagon says it uses the term for most of the men because they haven’t been convicted of crimes. The three who’ve been convicted are called prisoners.

Q: What are the conditions like?

A: When the first detainees arrived, they were housed in wire enclosures that looked like a backyard dog kennel. Now most detainees are in air-conditioned buildings, styled after a maximum-security prison in the United States. The buildings are called camps, though they have little in common with the image that word conjures.

Until recently, most of the detainees were in Camp 6, where they were allowed to keep their cell doors open and move freely in a common area where they could watch television and eat together. But in April, in response to detainees’ covering cameras used to monitor them, the guards forced all the prisoners back into their single-occupancy, 6.8- by 12-foot cells. The most secret of the facilities, Camp 7, holds an estimated 15 of the highest-value detainees, including those accused of planning the 9/11 attacks. As of Monday, 100 detainees were refusing food; 23 of those are force-fed twice daily through tubes snaked up their noses and down their throats.

Q: What rules apply to how they’re treated?

A: The United States characterizes most as “unprivileged enemy belligerents,” rather than prisoners of war. Under Executive Order 13492, however, detainees are supposed to be treated in a manner consistent with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which among other things prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity.” Congress also has specified certain standards through laws such as the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibits “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment and requires that interrogations conform with conventional U.S. Army standards.

Q: Does the U.S. Constitution apply to detainees at Guantanamo?

A: To a degree, yes. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 2008 decision called Boumediene v. Bush that Guantanamo detainees had the same constitutional right to file a habeas corpus petition as prisoners in the United States. Although Cuba owns the Guantanamo land, the Supreme Court noted, the United States has exercised “complete jurisdiction and control” for more than 100 years. Consequently, the justices reasoned that this amounted to de facto U.S. sovereignty.

Q: How much does Guantanamo cost to operate?

A: The Obama administration reported to Congress in mid-2011 that it “spends approximately $150 million per year on detention operations at Guantanamo, currently at a rate of more than $800,000 per detainee.” In addition, the Bush and Obama administrations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the facility. The average cost to hold a prisoner in the United States is about $30,000 per year.

Q: What’s stopping Obama from closing it and moving the men to U.S. prisons?

A: Since 2009, Congress has made it difficult for the Obama administration to transfer men out of Guantanamo. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 prohibits using any military funds to transfer detainees to the United States. It also prohibits transfers to foreign countries unless the secretary of defense certifies that the country meets certain standards, including that it isn’t “facing a threat that is likely to substantially affect its ability to exercise control over the individual.” That’s a problem for Yemen, which has an active al Qaida branch. After a Nigerian who said he’d been recruited in Yemen tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane, Obama ordered a halt to all transfers to Yemen. That’s held up the release of 26 Yemenis who’ve been approved for transfer and 30 more who the U.S. says could be transferred back to Yemen if the government there demonstrates it can hold them.

Q: How many released Guantanamo detainees have returned to fighting the United States?

A: This a hotly debated topic. In January, the director of national intelligence issued a report on what had become of 603 men who’d been transferred out of Guantanamo. The report found that 97 were “confirmed of re-engaging” against U.S. forces, of which about half were dead or back in custody. Another 72 were “suspected of re-engaging” against U.S. forces, though there was no explanation of what evidence led to the suspicion.

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Alleged 9/11 Plotters Have Another Day in Guantanamo Court

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/...-plotters.html

By: Larisa Epatko
June 16, 2013 at 5:54 PM EDT

The courtroom used for detainees at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is an old airport. Photo by Larisa Epatko.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, identified in the 9/11 Commission Report as the "principal architect of the 9/11 attacks," is slated to appear in court with four suspected co-conspirators on Monday.

The hearing is scheduled to start June 17 and could last throughout the week. It is on a series of pretrial motions, including motions to dismiss the charges because of problems with the Military Commission Act of 2009.

Mohammed, who grew up in Kuwait, allegedly presented the al-Qaida leadership with the plan to hijack several airliners and fly them into targets. He was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003.

Four other men are charged:

• Waleed bin Attash, a Yemeni, allegedly ran a training camp in Afghanistan where two of the 9/11 hijackers went.
• Ramzi Binalshibh, also a Yemeni, is said to have found flight schools for the hijackers and helped them enter the United States.
• Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, a Saudi, is accused of providing money, Western clothing and credit cards for the hijackers.
• Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, a Pakistani, allegedly provided $120,000 to the hijackers for flight training and other expenses.

The five suspects are being tried at Guantanamo Bay in a war crimes tribunal known as a military commission. The charges against them include murder and terrorism, and they could get the death penalty if convicted.

The last time the five appeared in court was in May 2012 at their arraignment, which was repeatedly interrupted as they complained of torture and prayed during unauthorized times.

We'll be live-blogging the hearing -- which will be broadcast at Fort Meade via closed-circuit TV feeds from Guantanamo -- on the Rundown and on Twitter.

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9/11 accused in Guantanamo court but trial distant

http://www.bradenton.com/2013/06/17/...-in-court.html

By BEN FOX — Associated Press

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — Five Guantanamo Bay prisoners accused of helping orchestrate the Sept. 11 terror attack returned to court Monday as arguments resumed over preparations for a trial that remains distant.

It was the first time the five prisoners had been in court since February and they sat calmly through a morning's worth of dense legalistic testimony, with none of the outbursts that characterized previous sessions. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed terrorist mastermind and lead defendant, wore a camouflage jacket and white turban, his bushy gray beard dyed reddish-orange.

In the audience, behind panels of glass that allow the government to cut off sound in case classified information is inadvertently uttered, were two retired New York firefighters injured while responding to the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, as well as relatives of other victims. The spectators were chosen by lottery to view the proceedings at the U.S. base in Cuba. Several said they were eager to see it move along.

"They are obviously guilty, I think they have already admitted it, and the trial should happen as quickly as possible," said Joe Torrillo, one of the two retired firefighters.

Mohammed has told the military that he was involved in a long list of terrorist plots, including the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and has said in court that he was proud of his role in the Sept. 11 plot. The men have not yet entered pleas and defense lawyers say the men were tortured in CIA custody.

In the start of what is scheduled to be five days of hearings on pretrial motions, the defense questioned retired Navy Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, the Pentagon legal official who oversaw the military tribunals until his term expired in March. The lawyers asked about rules that he approved governing attorney-client interactions in the case.

Defense lawyers called MacDonald in part to challenge the rules, which they say interfere with their ability to represent their clients, who are held under ultra-secure conditions in a section of Guantanamo reserved for men deemed by the Pentagon to be "high-value detainees."

Defense teams have argued that MacDonald may have been improperly swayed in approving the charges in the case in April 2012 and acted too quickly, not giving the lawyers enough time to prepare a response to the prosecution's filing. He testified by video link from Washington state for the entire day and was scheduled to resume testifying Tuesday.

In the final minutes of Monday's session, the lawyer for defendant Ramzi Binalshibh asked that the defendant be allowed to address the court. The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, denied the request.

Pohl is hearing motions this week on a long list of procedural motions, including whether the defendants can be excluded from closed pretrial sessions that deal with classified material and whether the defense can gain access to confidential reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The government has asked for a trial in late 2014, though it's likely to be later.

Mohammed and his four co-defendants each face charges that include terrorism and nearly 3,000 counts of murder for their alleged roles planning and aiding the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States. They could get the death penalty if convicted.

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US seeks right to exclude 9-11 defendants from some pretrial hearings at Guantanamo

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/...007/story.html

By The Associated Press June 19, 2013 4:07 PM

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Prosecutors in the Sept. 11 war crimes case at Guantanamo are asking a judge to allow secret pretrial hearings that would exclude even the defendants.

Justice Department attorney Joanna Baltes says U.S. law would allow hearings without the defendants to protect national security. But lawyers for the five defendants say there is no legal basis to keep them out. Defence attorney David Nevin said defendants in death penalty cases must be allowed to attend all proceedings. Both sides agree they could not be excluded during the actual trial.

The question arose during the third day of a pretrial hearing. The judge did not rule on the issue Wednesday. But the same judge allowed a secret hearing without the accused in the USS Cole case on Friday.

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Prosecutors request secret hearings in 9/11 case

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...bed0674115b.81

(AFP) – 13 hours ago

FORT MEADE, Maryland — Prosecutors trying five men accused of plotting the September 11, 2001 attacks asked Wednesday that the defendants be excluded from their trial when classified evidence is heard.

Lawyers for the five, who include self-declared 9/11 kingpin Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, strongly opposed the move on the third day of a preliminary hearing held at Guantanamo Bay and broadcast to Fort Meade near Washington.

Mohammed, known as KSM, appeared before the hearing at the US prison in Cuba wearing a camouflage jacket and sporting a thick red beard. His four co-conspirators all dressed in traditional Afghan robes and caps.

Military prosecutor Joanna Baltes asked the judge to bar the accused from attending any sessions when classified information surrounding the case is addressed.

The five men were held incommunicado in secret CIA prisons from 2002 to 2006, before they were transferred to Guantanamo.

The detainees' treatment has come under close scrutiny. Mohammed is known to have been subjected to 183 sessions of waterboarding, the technique of simulated drowning which has been decried as torture by rights groups.

Mohammed's lawyer David Nevin argued that excluding his client, who faces the death penalty if convicted, should not be allowed.

"This is a capital case, we object to him being excluded from these proceedings at any time," Nevin said.

"By virtue of charging them with capital case, by seeking the court's authority to kill them at the end of the proceedings, they become authorized to attend all relevant evidence to their case," Nevin added.

Nevin said the classified portions of the case related to Mohammed's treatment since his incarceration.

"What we're talking about is the torture. Mr Mohammed has the right to be present when we are dealing with matters that address to his torture. We're talking about a capital case, we're talking about executing him," he said.

Judge James Pohl asked prosecutors whether it would be possible to split the prosecution up, or to exclude other defendants when classified information about another defendant was being heard.

But Baltes said splitting up the case would be complicated.

Other lawyers for the men also protested against moves to exclude their clients from parts of the hearings.

The five accused had a right to be present, Cheryl Bormann argued.

"It's the foundation of fairness... they have the right to be present, that's what statutes say," she said.

The hearing, due to be completed on Friday, aims to fix a trial date for the five men, who face the death penalty if convicted of plotting the attacks on New York and Washington which left nearly 3,000 people dead.