US charges 6 for roles in 9/11 attacks, seeks death
Updated: 2008-02-12 08:57
Officials plan to hold the trial in a specially constructed court at Guantanamo that will allow lawyers, journalists and some others to be present, but leave relatives of Sept. 11 victims and others to watch the trial through closed-circuit broadcasts.
Mohammed was among 15 so-called "high-value detainees" who were held at length by the CIA in secret overseas prisons — some subject to what critics call torture — before being handed over to the military in 2006.
Waterboarding involves strapping a person down and pouring water over the suspect's cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years, to the Spanish Inquisition, and is condemned by nations around the world. Critics call it a form of torture.
In Guantanamo Bay hearings that have been criticized as unfair, Mohammed confessed to the 9/11 attack and a chilling string of other terror plots last March.
"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," Mohammed said in a statement read during the session, according to hearing transcripts later released by the Pentagon.
Under the system, the charges are forwarded to the convening authority for military commissions, Susan Crawford. She can refer some or all of them for trial.
And it could be months or longer before trials begin for the six Sept. 11 defendants. With the appeals process, it would likely be some time after any convictions before executions would be possible.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said Monday that President Bush and the White House had no role in the decision to seek the death penalty for the six charged.
"Obviously 9-11 was a defining moment in our history, and a defining moment in the global war on terror," Perino said. "And this judicial process is the next step in that story. The president is sure that the military is going to follow through in a way that the Congress said they should."
Here are other details of the charges:
_Each defendant was charged with conspiracy and a number of separate offenses including murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, destruction of property in violation of the law of war and terrorism.
_They allege that Khalid Sheik Mohammed proposed the operational concept for the attacks to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden as early as 1996, getting approval and funding from bin Laden and overseeing the operation.
_Mohammed, bin Attash, Binalshibh, Aziz Ali are also charged with hijacking the aircraft.
_Bin Attash is alleged to have administered an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan where two of the hijackers were trained; Binalshibh to have helped find flight schools for the hijackers; Aziz Ali's to have helped get the hijackers money and flight training; Al-Hawsawi and al-Qahtani to have helped with money.
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