Post date: Aug 22, 2013 11:29:33 AM
Pre-trial hearings continue for five defendants charged in the 9/11 plot at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval base. The legal debate slowly inches along, but allegations of a detainee being given a copy of the erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey by a prison guard as part of a disinformation campaign are taking center stage outside the courtroom.
GUANTANAMO BAY, U.S. NAVAL BASE, CUBA (AUGUST 21, 2013) (POOL) - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was in court on Wednesday (August 21) during a courtroom debate over whether the charges against him and four alleged co-conspirators in the September 11 plot were properly sent to trial as a death penalty case.
The issue is literally a matter of life and death, but the legal debate has moved slowly along over several pretrial hearings at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, rendering it torpid.Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the hijacked plane plot, was awakened before 5 a.m. for the trip from his cell to the top-security courtroom. Wearing a camouflage jacket over his white tunic, he rested his head in his hands at one point during the hearing and appeared to nod off for a moment, then seemed to jolt awake and resumed reading along with the legal documents.
Defense attorneys asked the judge in April 2012 to drop the charges, arguing that the Pentagonappointee overseeing the tribunal had rushed to refer it for trial as a death penalty case without giving them a chance to present potentially mitigating evidence. That mainly involves allegations that the defendants were tortured during CIA interrogations.
Eighteen months later, the request is not yet ripe for a ruling. The issue before the judge on Wednesday was whether to compel testimony from two legal advisers involved in the decision.
The defendants have been in U.S. custody since 2002 and 2003 and face charges that include conspiring with al Qaeda, terrorism and murder. They are accused of training and funding the hijackers who rammed four commercial jets into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania in 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.
Prosecutors hope to start the trial in September 2014.
Several family members of victims of the September 11 attacks are in Guantanamo for the hearings.
Francine Kaplan, who lost her daughter Robin in the attacks, and traveled to the naval base on her own to attend the hearings, was disappointed that victims of 9/11 weren't mentioned early on in the proceedings.
"They should have said something the first day. We will never ever have closure. We're never ever gonna get our brothers, our husbands, out daughters, our sons. We've lost them."
Joann Meehan, whose daughter Colleen worked at Cantor Fitzgerald also died at the World Trade Center. She had been a newly wed. She said being in court was an emotional experience.
"It was something to see them in person. You know they had something to do with my daughter's death. It was very hard, very hard."
Several issues not directly related to Wednesday's proceedings have been garnering attention - most notably a report that detainees are reading the popular erotic novel "Fifty Shades of Grey."
U.S. Representative Jim Moran of Virginia caused a sensation last month when he returned from a visit to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and quoted guards as saying the soft-porn "Grey" novels were the most-requested reading material among the prison's highest-profile inmates. The source of the books was a mystery since the detainee library doesn't stock the series.
Defense attorney James Connell said his client, Aamar al Baluchi, showed up in court with a copy that he said had been given to him by guards on Monday (August 19) night.
Baluchi had never heard of the book until he read news accounts of Moran's comments, and mistakenly thought it was titled "Thirty Shades of Grey," Connell said.
"Because he had just read a story about it he said okay I'll take the book. He took the book and has asked me to convey his sincere thanks to JTF Gitmo for the gift of Fifty Shades of Grey. But he says no thank you. He doesn't want the book and he has turned it over to me . It's in my safe and as soon as I'm able I will turn it over to Joint Task Force Guantanamo," Connell told reporters.
Connell, said it would stay locked in his safe until he could turn it over to the legal advisor for Camp 7. That maximum-security facility holds about a dozen captives previously held in CIA custody, including Baluchi and four other defendants charged in the 9/11 attacks.
Connell said giving the book to his client was either a practical joke gone too far or "some kind of disinformation campaign."
The congressman's allegations that the defendants preferred the "Grey" novels to the Koran ran counter to the pious image portrayed when they kneel on the courtroom floor to pray at regular intervals.
Detention camp officials had no comment and have repeatedly said they cannot discuss anything related to Camp 7 and those who live there.