By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau –
FORT MEADE, Md. — Pretrial hearings for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged top al-Qaida terror operatives opened Monday with a ruling that the defendants cannot be forced to attend the legal proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The decision by Judge James L. Pohl came after Mohammed and his comrades sat quietly and respectfully during the opening day of testimony at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo, sharply different from their courtroom protests during arraignment last spring.
In May, the defendants — who face the death penalty for their alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks — sought to disrupt the proceedings. One detainee was restrained, several refused to listen to Arabic translations on headphones and some outright ignored the judge. Two abruptly stood to pray.
But on Monday, all of them remained silent, led by Mohammed. He wore traditional white robes and turban, his long, thick beard dyed red. His four “brothers” sat silently behind him next to their own legal defense teams.
The proceedings were relayed by video to reporters at Fort Meade.
Mohammed is the accused mastermind of the attacks, serving just under then-al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The other defendants are Ramzi Binalshibh, the alleged manager of the cell that carried out the attacks; Walid bin Attash, an alleged al-Qaida training camp steward; and alleged al-Qaida financiers Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi and Ammar al Baluchi, aka Ali Abdul Aziz Ali.
Monday was the opening day in a weeklong pretrial hearing dealing with 25 legal disputes in the trial arising from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The defendants are named in 87 charges including conspiracy, murder, aircraft hijacking and terrorism. About 3,000 people died in New York, Pennsylvania and a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., when hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center, a field and the Pentagon. A trial is tentatively set for next May.
The government asked the judge to force the five defendants to appear at all court hearings and the trial, and to prohibit them from staying in their jail cells to protest the military commission trial.
Brigadier Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor, argued that under the military commission rules, the defendants had no “right to refuse” to attend. “The government should not be forced to proceed against empty chairs,” Martins said.
But defense lawyers said the defendants should not be compelled to appear. “There may be reasons why our clients don’t want to come to court on a particular day,” said James Harrington, a Binalshibh attorney. “Our clients may believe they don’t want anything to do with this court, that they don’t recognize the court.”
Air Force Capt. Michael Schwartz, representing Attash, said: “If my client feels like this process allows him to adequately defend himself, he would like to be here. But when the government says this process is humane, we should have the opportunity to refute that.”
He said the government wants them there to give the proceedings “the appearance of justice.”
Pohl ruled that the defendants “can choose to voluntarily not attend a session.”
