Document | The Pentagon's approved 9/11 charge sheet
Document | ACLU protest letter to Defense Secretary Gates
Document | The Pentagon's approved 9/11 charge sheet
Document | ACLU protest letter to Defense Secretary Gates
The chief judge of the Guantánamo Bay war court has set June 5 for the first court appearances of reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators.
The judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, notified military defense attorneys by email Wednesday afternoon that he would preside over the case himself. He scheduled arraignment of the five men at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.
That date is likely to precede a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on whether Guantánamo detainees are entitled to challenge their detention in civilian courts, expected in late June before the high court ends this year's term.
It was unclear whether the date would hold. Kohlmann instructed the lawyers to let him know if they sought delay.
It's just three weeks away, and at least one of the five accused in the Sept. 11 conspiracy has not yet seen an attorney, said Army Col. Steve David, chief defense counsel.
''He's set them for arraignment,'' said David, who in civilian life is an an Indiana judge. "So absent a motion for continuance and a favorable ruling, there will be an arraignment then. Whether or not everyone has had access to their client or had enough access to their client -- I don't know.''
Also the lawyer for another of the five is scheduled to defend Osama bin Laden's driver that same week, at trial.
Moreover, none of the five men has seen civilian criminal defense lawyers with death penalty expertise whom the American Civil Liberties Union has hired to help defend the men. The attorneys are still awaiting security clearances to reach the remote base and speak with their clients.
"The government is brazenly disregarding the rights of the accused without any consideration for due process,'' said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero, who appealed directly to Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week on the access issue.
"This approach will only add to the illegitimacy of the military commissions, which ... make a mockery of our Constitution and American values,” he said.
Arraignment is the formal reading of charges, with the accused and their attorneys in court -- in this instance accusing the five men of the worst terror attack on U.S. soil. It is the first capital case to go before a commission.
By military commissions rules, an accused must go before a war court judge within 30 days of approval and service of charges -- unless the defense seeks and gets a delay.
Navy Lt. Richard Federico, who is co-defense counsel for defendant Ramzi bin al Shibh, said defense attorneys were considering applying to Kohlmann for a delay.
''It's under discussion,'' he said.
A senior Pentagon official approved the Sept. 11, 2001, conspiracy case on Friday. It was not known on Wednesday whether the charges had been translated and officially presented to the five alleged terrorists, who are now held at a secluded site at Guantánamo, called Camp 7.
Kohlmann, a veteran of the first commissions, has the power to assign judges from a pool of military judges whose services have loaned them to run trials at the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II.
In the case of Mohammed, known as KSM, and the other alleged al Qaeda financiers and operators, he assigned himself. He had likewise presided over the March 2007 trial of David Hicks of Australia, who ultimately pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism.
Hicks admitted to serving as an al Qaeda foot soldier in Afghanistan in the 2001 U.S. invasion. In exchange he got a nine-month sentence, mostly served in Australia, and is now free in his homeland.
Kohlmann's current timetable for KSM's first-ever court appearance gives the Pentagon three weeks to fix a series of glitches that, just last week, bedeviled the new $12 million Expeditionary Legal Complex at Guantánamo.
During its first official court use, the audio broke, the video froze and the power cut in succession -- sending guards scurrying to surround an alleged al Qaeda member at his arraignment.
The Defense Department specifically designed the state-of-the-art, eavesdrop-proof courtroom for the trials of the former CIA-held captives accused of orchestrating the suicide hijackings that killed 2,973 people from the World Trade Center to the Pentagon to a Pennsylvania field.
The courtroom has a mute button so spectators in an adjacent gallery cannot hear if any of the accused try to spill state secrets, such as where and how they were interrogated in years of secret, overseas CIA custody.
The Pentagon is inviting some 60 journalists to the KSM court date.
