No decision has yet been made about where to hold the military trials, Mr. Holder said. But the administration’s decision to bring five Sept. 11 detainees onto United States soil for prosecution in the civilian legal system drew immediate fire from members of Congress as well as relatives of victims and neighbors of the federal courthouse.
They argued that Qaeda suspects did not deserve the protections afforded by the American criminal justice system, that bringing them into the United States would heighten the risk of another terrorist attack, that civilian trials increase the risk of disclosing classified information, and that if the detainees were acquitted they could be released into the population.
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By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 14, 2009
When two planes struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, Khalid Sheik Mohammed was sitting in an Internet cafe in Karachi, Pakistan, monitoring the attacks. At first, Mohammed later told CIA interrogators, he was disappointed. He said that he expected the towers to crumble immediately and that he feared they might not fall at all.
After the towers came down, Mohammed returned to a hideaway flat in the city. There, according to newly disclosed details from U.S. officials, he and a number of associates, including Ramzi Binalshibh, al-Qaeda's liaison with the Sept. 11 hijackers, gathered to watch coverage on international news channels.
Through the night in Pakistan, the men embraced repeatedly in celebration, marveling at their spectacular success and the humbling of the American giant.
More than eight years later, Mohammed, a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will soon be transferred to federal court in Manhattan, returning to a city that officials say he visited as a tourist while a student in North Carolina in the 1980s. The man widely known as KSM will arrive in New York as the most striking symbol of the Obama administration's effort to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. He is also a central figure in the debate over harsh interrogation techniques, which were used repeatedly on Mohammed in a bid to force him to divulge intelligence -- which can now be invoked at his trial.
While at Guantanamo Bay, where he has been held since September 2006, Mohammed has said he wants to be executed so that he can die a martyr. It is unclear whether he will maintain that position in U.S. District Court. But his trial will probably chart the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath, from the conspiracy's beginnings in the mountains of Afghanistan, where Mohammed proposed the plot in a meeting with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, to the dark recesses of the CIA's secret prisons, where he spent more than three years.
At first, Mohammed later told CIA interrogators, he was disappointed. He said that he expected the towers to crumble immediately and that he feared they might not fall at all.
As 3000 Mothers, Fathers and children burned to death.
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