Alleged Sept. 11 planners being arraigned at Gitmo

AP

At left, a 2003 photo obtained by the Associated Press shows Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 attacks mastermind, shortly after his capture. At right, a photo downloaded from Arabic language website www.muslm.net and purporting to show a man identified as Mohammed.

By NBC News and news services

Updated at 10:15 a.m. ET: GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba --?The self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four accused co-conspirators appeared in public for the first time in more than three years Saturday, when U.S. officials started a second attempt at what is likely to be a drawn out legal battle that could lead to the men's executions.?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants were being arraigned at a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on charges that include that include 2,976 counts of murder.

Four of the five were unrestrained in court but the fifth,?Walid bin Attash, showed up in a restraint chair because of "actions that took place outside" when he resisted going to court, NBC News quoted the tribunal as saying. The restraints were later removed.

Another defendant, Ramzi Binalshibh, briefly delayed proceedings by dropping to the floor to pray.

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Mohammed, a Pakistani citizen who grew up in Kuwait and attended college in Greensboro, N.C., refused to answer questions.

The tribunal judge, Army Col. James Pohl, warned he would not permit defendants to block the hearing and would continue without Mohammed's participation. "One cannot choose not to participate and frustrate the normal course of business," Pohl said.

Mohammed had previously mocked the military tribunal and said he would welcome the death penalty.

But there were signs that at least some of the defense teams were preparing for a lengthy fight, planning challenges of the military tribunals and the secrecy that shrouds the case.

Mohammed's four co-defendants are:

• Binalshibh, a Yemeni, was allegedly chosen to be a hijacker but couldn't get a U.S. visa and ended up providing assistance such as finding flight schools;
• Attash, also from Yemen, allegedly ran an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and researched flight simulators and timetables;
• Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, a Saudi accused of helping the hijackers with money, Western clothing, traveler's checks and credit cards;
• Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, a Pakistani national and nephew of KSM, allegedly provided money to the hijackers.?

Binalshibh also earlier told the court he was proud of the attacks in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pa.?

Family members of 9/11 victims have traveled to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to watch the arraignment of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. NBC's Michael Isikoff reports.

But "I don't think anyone is going to plead guilty," said Jim Harrington, Binalshibh's civilian lawyer, who added the defendants are expected to fight the charges against them.?

Harrington declined to say what would be the basis of his defense and lawyers for Mohammed did not respond to messages seeking comment.?

The arraignment is "only the beginning of a trial that will take years to complete, followed by years of appellate review," attorney James Connell, who represents al-Aziz Ali, told reporters gathered at the base to observe the hearing.

"I can't imagine any scenario where this thing gets wrapped up in six months," Connell said.

Defendants in what is known as a military commission typically do not enter a plea during their arraignment. Instead, the judge reads the charges, makes sure the accused understand their rights and then moves on to procedural issues. Lawyers for the men said they were prohibited by secrecy rules from disclosing the intentions of their clients.?

The men, held in a secret prison in Guantanamo that is under such tight security even its exact location on the base is classified, had not been seen in public since a pretrial hearing the day after President Barack Obama's Jan. 21, 2009, inauguration.?

Their arraignment comes more than three years after the Obama administration's failed effort to try the suspects in a federal civilian court and close the prison at the U.S. base in Cuba.

An online article purportedly written by al-Qaida members includes instructions on how to set fires in Montana. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced in 2009 that Mohammed and his co-defendants would be tried blocks from the site of the destroyed trade center in downtown Manhattan, but the plan was shelved after New York officials cited huge costs to secure the neighborhood and family opposition to trying the suspects in the U.S.?

Six family members who won a lottery to attend the proceedings were facing Mohammed and the other men in court; others were watching on closed-circuit video at military bases in New York City and the eastern U.S.?

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Cliff and Christina Russell traveled from New York to honor the memory of Cliff's younger brother, Stephen, a firefighter killed responding to the attacks. Cliff Russell said he hopes the tribunal will end with the death penalty for Mohammed and his co-defendants.?

"I'm not looking forward to ending someone else's life and taking satisfaction in it, but it's the most disgusting, hateful, awful thing I ever could think of if you think about what was perpetrated," he said.?

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The men never entered formal pleas in previous hearings, but Mohammed had told the court that he would confess to planning the attacks "from A to Z" and hoped to be a "martyr."

He dismissed the military justice system, saying, "After torturing, they transferred us to inquisition land in Guantanamo."?

The arraignment is expected to be followed by a hearing on defense motions that challenge the charges and extreme secrecy rules imposed to prevent the release of information about U.S. counterterrorism methods and strategy.?

New rules adopted by Congress and Obama forbid the use of testimony obtained through cruel treatment or torture. The defendants were held at secret CIA prisons overseas where they were subjected to what the government called "enhanced interrogation techniques." Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, officials have said.?

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The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion Friday asking the judge to prohibit the government's use of a 40-second delay and a white noise machine to prevent any spectators from hearing classified information, including details about the harsh treatment in the secret CIA detention sites overseas.?

"If the defendants are unable to express themselves directly to the American public then how are we to know whether justice is being served," said ACLU director Anthony Romero.?

Rachel Maddow points out that while fear and a lack of confidence in the American Justice system has forced terror trials like the upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be held at Guantanamo, prosecutors were able to conduct a successful terror conviction in a Brooklyn court without any of the dire consequences warned of by alarmists.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch and a former federal prosecutor, say coerced testimony from witnesses is still admissible, even if it isn't from defendants, and the case would be better off in civilian court instead of being heard by a judge and jury panel picked by the Pentagon.?

"There still are major problems in terms of whether the trial will be fair and, more important, will they be perceived as fair," Roth said.?

The government has pledged to make the proceedings more transparent by broadcasting the hearing to families at U.S. military bases. News cameras, however, are still not permitted inside the courtroom, where the media and other observers are kept behind double-paned, soundproof glass.?

Lawyers for the defendants had opposed the government's plan to show the hearings just to the families.?

"We believe that the world needs to see what's happening," said Cheryl Bormann, a civilian attorney appointed to represent Attash.?

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Prisoners now have access, at government expense, to civilian defense attorneys who specialize in complex death penalty cases. But human rights groups and defense lawyers still condemn the proceedings as flawed and fundamentally unfair.?

Lawyers appointed to represent the men say they face hurdles they would never encounter in a civilian court, including strict limits on what they can say about their clients, whose every utterance is treated as presumptively classified.?

"All I can do is try and protect my client's rights to every extent I can and try and hold the government to their burden to provide a fair and transparent justice system and to actually mean it," Bormann said.?

Mohammed and his co-defendants were first arraigned on the U.S. base in Cuba in June 2008. The case quickly bogged down in pretrial motions and was put on hold as Obama sought to move the case to the federal court in New York.?

But members of Congress balked and blocked the administration from transferring prisoners from the base to the mainland. That prevented the closure of the prison, where the U.S. still holds 169 prisoners.?

"There is a consensus now ... that military commissions have a narrow but critical role in our counterterrorism and justice system," said Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, a Harvard Law School classmate of Obama's who was appointed chief prosecutor last year.?

Mohammed confessed to military authorities that he planned or carried out about 30 plots around the world. He admitted personally killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and said he conceived the plot to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight by would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid in 2001. Mohammed was captured in 2003 in Pakistan.?

Roth, who will be part of a human rights contingent observing Saturday's arraignment at Guantanamo, said the prosecution can work around the ban on coerced testimony, perhaps even unwittingly, by introducing classified summaries of intelligence to support their case.?

Even with the changes, the defense lawyers say the commissions are anything but fair. They complain that their mail is improperly reviewed by the military, interfering with attorney-client privilege, that they aren't given enough resources to investigate cases the government spent years building, that too many hearings are still held in secret and that they are barred from disclosing anything their clients tell them.?

"You can take a $5 mule and put a $10,000 saddle on it and call it reformed," said Navy Cmdr. Walter Ruiz, a military lawyer for al-Hawsawi. "You still have a $5 mule; it just has a fancy saddle."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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