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AG Holder says he will try Khalid Sheik Ron Jeremy in NYC
November 14, 2009
Key 9/11 Suspect to Be Tried in New York
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and four other men accused in the plot will be prosecuted in federal court in New York City, the United States attorney general announced Friday.
But the administration will prosecute another set of high-profile detainees now being held at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen, and four other detainees — before a military commission.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced those decisions in a news conference Friday at the Department of Justice. The arrangements would mean that civilian prosecutors would handle those detainees accused of the 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, northern Virginia and Pennsylvania, while the 2000 attack against the Cole would remain within the military system.
No detainee is being moved right away. Under a law Congress enacted this year, lawmakers must be given 45 days notice before the executive branch moves any Guantánamo Bay detainee onto United States soil.
The decision marks a milestone in the administration’s efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, something that President Obama announced shortly after taking office that he would do within a year, but that has proved difficult to achieve because of uncertainty about what to do with the detainees housed there.
Mr. Obama, asked about the decision in a news conference on his weeklong trip to Asia, declined to comment directly, but said that Mr. Mohammed would face justice.
“I’m absolutely convinced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice,” Mr. Obama said. “The American people insist on it, and my administration insists on it.”
Shortly after taking office, Mr. Obama also shut down the Bush administration’s military commissions. But in a speech at the National Archives in May, he said his administration was considering reviving some form of the panels, which have more flexible standards for handling evidence gathered in battlefield settings and through classified methods, to handle especially difficult prosecutions. He promised to make the commissions more fair with extra safeguards for defendants.
Still, the prospect of giving different detainees different kinds of trials, based on where government officials think they can win convictions, has led to criticism by some human rights and civil liberties advocates.
Adding to the difficulties of shutting down Guantánamo is that in almost every other place within the United States that the administration has talked about transferring prisoners, the local community has risen up through political leaders to say they did not want to take the inmates because they feared they could become targets for terrorism.
New York City has been different. In March, for example, when the administration prepared to bring Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a suspect in the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Africa that killed 224 people, to face trial there, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the city was well-accustomed to handling high-profile terror suspects.
“Bottom line is we have had terrorists housed in New York before,” Mr. Schumer said at a March news conference at the Capitol with other Democratic leaders. “They’ve been housed safely.”
Mr. Schumer at the time pointed to the “blind sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted on terrorism-related charges in New York. “The main concern is bringing these terrorists to justice and making sure the public is safe,” Mr. Schumer said. “I have faith that the administration will do both.”
Still, Mr. Ghailani is not facing a potential death sentence, and is not nearly as high profile as Mr. Mohammed. A prosecution for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City could test such attitudes.
Republicans have strongly opposed proposals to bring Guantánamo detainees onto United States soil for civilian trials. In an opinion piece this week in The National Law Journal, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican Senate leader, asserted that civilian trials risk “compromising sensitive information,” present “logistical and security nightmares for American cities” and would give terrorism suspects additional legal rights. He also warned that if a defendant is acquitted and cannot be deported, the former detainee could end up being released onto United States soil.
A spokesman for Mr. McConnell said he would comment after Mr. Holder’s news conference.
The decisions about how to prosecute Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Nashiri have been particularly difficult because their defense lawyers are expected to argue that they were illegally tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency during their confinement, tainting any evidence gathered from their interrogations. The Bush administration later sent a so-called “clean team” to re-question the prisoners in preparations for military commission trials.
Documents have shown that the C.I.A. used waterboarding — a controlled drowning technique — against Mr. Mohammed 183 times in March 2003. Mr. Nashiri is one of two other detainees known to have been waterboarded before the Bush administration shut down the program, which high-level officials had approved after the Justice Department wrote legal memorandums arguing that the president, as commander in chief, could authorize interrogators to bypass antitorture laws.
Mr. Mohammed and the four other suspects accused of helping organize the Sept. 11 plot — Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi — had been facing potential death sentences if convicted of the charges the Bush administration had brought against them in military commissions before the Obama administration froze those proceedings.
Mr. Mohammed was captured on March 1, 2003, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. For the next several years, he was held in secret prisons run by the C.I.A. In September 2006, Mr. Mohammed and 13 other “high value” Al Qaeda prisoners were transferred to the detention center in Guantánamo.
Aside from statements under interrogation, at a hearing held there released in March 2007, Mr. Mohammed took full credit for the 9/11 attacks and a number of other plots. (He also asserted that he had personally decapitated a kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan.) On Dec. 8, 2008, Mr. Mohammed, along with four co-defendants, sent a note to a military judge at Guantánamo asking to confess and to plead guilty.
Mr. Mohammed, an ethnic Baluchi, was born in Kuwait on April 24, 1965. He is the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. He studied mechanical engineering in the United States in the 1980s.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, his only involvement with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was conversations with Mr. Yousef, and some contributions to the conspirators. He traveled to the Philippines with Mr. Yousef in 1994 and worked on the Bojinka plot — an aborted plan to explode 12 commercial jets over the Pacific.
Mr. Mohammed was indicted in the United States on charges stemming from the Manila plot, but he eluded the F.B.I. in Qatar in 1996. He fled to Afghanistan and met with Osama bin Laden, where he proposed a plan to train pilots to crash 10 planes into targets in the United States. Mr. bin Laden was not persuaded but he asked Mr. Mohammed to join Al Qaeda, an offer he declined. After the 1998 African embassy bombings by Al Qaeda, however, he accepted Mr. bin Laden’s invitation to move to Afghanistan and pursue the 9/11 plan.
Several prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia — which includes the Pentagon, one of the targets on Sept. 11, 2001 — will assist in the trial in New York.
It was not immediately clear where the military commission trials would take place. The Bush administration spent tens of millions of dollars building a courtroom at Guantánamo Bay, but it has sat empty since the Obama administration froze legal proceedings there to undertake a review of how to handle the detainees. Officials have been eyeing military brigs elsewhere, including some inside the United States.
About 215 detainees remain at the military base, which became a global symbol of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policy of holding detainees without trial. About 90 have been cleared for transfers to other countries, and Obama officials have said they expect that some of the remainder will be tried, either in federal court or military commissions, while others will continue to be held without trial because they are deemed too dangerous to release but too difficult to prosecute for evidentiary reasons.
David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington, Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Tokyo.
Key 9/11 Suspect to Be Tried in New York
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and four other men accused in the plot will be prosecuted in federal court in New York City, the United States attorney general announced Friday.
But the administration will prosecute another set of high-profile detainees now being held at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen, and four other detainees — before a military commission.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced those decisions in a news conference Friday at the Department of Justice. The arrangements would mean that civilian prosecutors would handle those detainees accused of the 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, northern Virginia and Pennsylvania, while the 2000 attack against the Cole would remain within the military system.
No detainee is being moved right away. Under a law Congress enacted this year, lawmakers must be given 45 days notice before the executive branch moves any Guantánamo Bay detainee onto United States soil.
The decision marks a milestone in the administration’s efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, something that President Obama announced shortly after taking office that he would do within a year, but that has proved difficult to achieve because of uncertainty about what to do with the detainees housed there.
Mr. Obama, asked about the decision in a news conference on his weeklong trip to Asia, declined to comment directly, but said that Mr. Mohammed would face justice.
“I’m absolutely convinced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice,” Mr. Obama said. “The American people insist on it, and my administration insists on it.”
Shortly after taking office, Mr. Obama also shut down the Bush administration’s military commissions. But in a speech at the National Archives in May, he said his administration was considering reviving some form of the panels, which have more flexible standards for handling evidence gathered in battlefield settings and through classified methods, to handle especially difficult prosecutions. He promised to make the commissions more fair with extra safeguards for defendants.
Still, the prospect of giving different detainees different kinds of trials, based on where government officials think they can win convictions, has led to criticism by some human rights and civil liberties advocates.
Adding to the difficulties of shutting down Guantánamo is that in almost every other place within the United States that the administration has talked about transferring prisoners, the local community has risen up through political leaders to say they did not want to take the inmates because they feared they could become targets for terrorism.
New York City has been different. In March, for example, when the administration prepared to bring Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a suspect in the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Africa that killed 224 people, to face trial there, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the city was well-accustomed to handling high-profile terror suspects.
“Bottom line is we have had terrorists housed in New York before,” Mr. Schumer said at a March news conference at the Capitol with other Democratic leaders. “They’ve been housed safely.”
Mr. Schumer at the time pointed to the “blind sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted on terrorism-related charges in New York. “The main concern is bringing these terrorists to justice and making sure the public is safe,” Mr. Schumer said. “I have faith that the administration will do both.”
Still, Mr. Ghailani is not facing a potential death sentence, and is not nearly as high profile as Mr. Mohammed. A prosecution for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City could test such attitudes.
Republicans have strongly opposed proposals to bring Guantánamo detainees onto United States soil for civilian trials. In an opinion piece this week in The National Law Journal, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican Senate leader, asserted that civilian trials risk “compromising sensitive information,” present “logistical and security nightmares for American cities” and would give terrorism suspects additional legal rights. He also warned that if a defendant is acquitted and cannot be deported, the former detainee could end up being released onto United States soil.
A spokesman for Mr. McConnell said he would comment after Mr. Holder’s news conference.
The decisions about how to prosecute Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Nashiri have been particularly difficult because their defense lawyers are expected to argue that they were illegally tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency during their confinement, tainting any evidence gathered from their interrogations. The Bush administration later sent a so-called “clean team” to re-question the prisoners in preparations for military commission trials.
Documents have shown that the C.I.A. used waterboarding — a controlled drowning technique — against Mr. Mohammed 183 times in March 2003. Mr. Nashiri is one of two other detainees known to have been waterboarded before the Bush administration shut down the program, which high-level officials had approved after the Justice Department wrote legal memorandums arguing that the president, as commander in chief, could authorize interrogators to bypass antitorture laws.
Mr. Mohammed and the four other suspects accused of helping organize the Sept. 11 plot — Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi — had been facing potential death sentences if convicted of the charges the Bush administration had brought against them in military commissions before the Obama administration froze those proceedings.
Mr. Mohammed was captured on March 1, 2003, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. For the next several years, he was held in secret prisons run by the C.I.A. In September 2006, Mr. Mohammed and 13 other “high value” Al Qaeda prisoners were transferred to the detention center in Guantánamo.
Aside from statements under interrogation, at a hearing held there released in March 2007, Mr. Mohammed took full credit for the 9/11 attacks and a number of other plots. (He also asserted that he had personally decapitated a kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan.) On Dec. 8, 2008, Mr. Mohammed, along with four co-defendants, sent a note to a military judge at Guantánamo asking to confess and to plead guilty.
Mr. Mohammed, an ethnic Baluchi, was born in Kuwait on April 24, 1965. He is the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. He studied mechanical engineering in the United States in the 1980s.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, his only involvement with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was conversations with Mr. Yousef, and some contributions to the conspirators. He traveled to the Philippines with Mr. Yousef in 1994 and worked on the Bojinka plot — an aborted plan to explode 12 commercial jets over the Pacific.
Mr. Mohammed was indicted in the United States on charges stemming from the Manila plot, but he eluded the F.B.I. in Qatar in 1996. He fled to Afghanistan and met with Osama bin Laden, where he proposed a plan to train pilots to crash 10 planes into targets in the United States. Mr. bin Laden was not persuaded but he asked Mr. Mohammed to join Al Qaeda, an offer he declined. After the 1998 African embassy bombings by Al Qaeda, however, he accepted Mr. bin Laden’s invitation to move to Afghanistan and pursue the 9/11 plan.
Several prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia — which includes the Pentagon, one of the targets on Sept. 11, 2001 — will assist in the trial in New York.
It was not immediately clear where the military commission trials would take place. The Bush administration spent tens of millions of dollars building a courtroom at Guantánamo Bay, but it has sat empty since the Obama administration froze legal proceedings there to undertake a review of how to handle the detainees. Officials have been eyeing military brigs elsewhere, including some inside the United States.
About 215 detainees remain at the military base, which became a global symbol of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policy of holding detainees without trial. About 90 have been cleared for transfers to other countries, and Obama officials have said they expect that some of the remainder will be tried, either in federal court or military commissions, while others will continue to be held without trial because they are deemed too dangerous to release but too difficult to prosecute for evidentiary reasons.
David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington, Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Tokyo.
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