Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Miami Herald

9/11 kin to watch terror trial at Guantánamo, by lottery

Five relatives of Sept. 11 victims will be able to attend a hearing for an alleged al Qaeda kingpin in December.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — With the war court’s future uncertain, the Pentagon has made plans to bring victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — chosen by lottery — to watch a hearing of reputed al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s death penalty trial.

Five will be chosen. In an Oct. 20 letter, the chief war crimes prosecutor invited relatives of those killed on 9/11 to submit names to watch a military commissions hearing Dec. 8, during the closing days of President Bush’s administration, which has championed the tribunals.

Scheduled that day is a hearing in the case of Mohammed and four other former CIA-held captives accused of conspiring to train, finance and orchestrate the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people in the 2001 attacks.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who has for years helped steer Bush administration detainee policy, issued an endorsement of the plan to airlift family members of those killed in the attacks to this remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

”Soon, some of those victim families will have the opportunity to see firsthand the fair, open and just trials of those alleged to have perpetrated these horrific acts,” England said.

A former military prosecutor has testified that England had discussed with Pentagon lawyers the ”strategic political value” of charging some prized Guantánamo detainees before the 2006 congressional elections.

But Pentagon officials attributed the Dec. 8 timing to finally implementing a long-promised victims witness program, which will enable thousands of family members of the Sept. 11 dead to watch the eventual trial through satellite feeds to four U.S. military bases.

No trial date has been set.

Meantime, the United States is proceeding this week with its second ever terror trial. Ali Hamza al Bahlul, about 38, is accused of recruiting jihadists while working as an al Qaeda media secretary and propagandist in Afghanistan. He faces a maximum life in prison.

SENTENCE APPEALED

Like the first man tried, Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan, 40, Bahlul is from Yemen. Hamdan’s military jury sentenced him to spend the rest of the year in prison, a ruling the Pentagon’s prosecutor is appealing.

The prosecutor is starting the victims program by permitting five 9/11 family members to observe proceedings as the five alleged terrorists and their legal counsel argue about what law and evidence might be used at trial.

The Defense Department notified kin of the 9/11 dead through letters and postings on electronic message boards offering a chance to visit this outpost for up to a week, at Pentagon expense. Thousands are eligible to apply. They include the parents, children, spouses or siblings of those killed in New York, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.

Yet, the future of the war court itself is uncertain.

Both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have pledged to close the prison camps at Guantánamo.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain has said through his campaign that he would keep the war court he helped establish through the 2006 Military Commissions Act but might move the trials themselves to U.S. soil.

Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama advocates trying alleged terrorists in traditional U.S. courts, not the special post-9/11 justice system that has been a keystone of the Bush administration’s controversial detention policy.

One person who applied to the Guantánamo visitors program is Queens, N.Y., antiwar activist Adele Welty, whose firefighter son, Tim, was killed at the World Trade Center.

He is listed as victim No. 2653 on the conspiracy charge, which lists the names of 2,973 Sept. 11 dead.

Pentagon prosecutors seek the death penalty for the five alleged co-conspirators. But Welty is concerned that her politics might exclude her from eligibility, especially since, she said, Pentagon prosecutors had her fill out a form that asked her position on capital punishment.

She testified against executing alleged 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui during the penalty phase of his 2006 trial. “I feel that if we’re going to kill people, we’re no different than the terrorists.”

WARNING LETTER

And she took part in a January 2007 protest against Guantánamo detention policies on the Castro side of Cuba, which got her a warning letter from the U.S. government.

But she wants to see a portion of the trial firsthand because she’s heard about the secrecy of the military commission system.

”He still needs to have a fair trial,” Welty said, “not because of who he is, but because of what kind of a country we want to be.”

The chief war crimes prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, said someone’s opinion on the death penalty would have no bearing on the lottery. Rather, he said, 9/11 family members were asked to voluntarily fill out ”Victim Impact Questionnaires” as an information-gathering tool.

http://www.miamiherald.com/1218/story/742841.html