WASHINGTON -- Military prosecutors announced murder and conspiracy charges against six Guantanamo detainees accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks and said yesterday that they will seek the death penalty in each case.
The charges are the first against defendants accused of direct participation in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Osama bin Laden, the ultimate mastermind and financier of 9/11, was not charged.
The detailed charges unveiled yesterday were the first step in what officials acknowledged will be a long and contentious legal drama. If the charges are approved, they will be heard in an unusual joint military trial at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The court proceedings will not be televised, but the public will be allowed access to the courtroom for most of the sessions, a Pentagon lawyer said. The lawyer, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, said it will take at least until summer and probably longer for the trial to get under way, as prosecutors and defense attorneys struggle to clear away a tangle of legal issues, including the admissibility of evidence obtained under torture.
The most senior suspect in detention, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has confessed to planning several terrorist operations including the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. But the CIA director, Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, acknowledged last week that the agency used such interrogation techniques as "waterboarding," which creates the feeling of drowning, on Mohammed.
At least one other defendant, Mohammed al-Qahtani, has asserted he was subjected to abusive interrogation.
Under military rules, the prosecution charges will be reviewed by a senior military judge to determine whether there is probable cause to refer the charges to trial. If so, the case will be heard by a jury of at least 12 military officers.
Issues such as the admissibility of evidence obtained under torture "will be decided in the courtroom among the prosecutors and defense in front of the military judge," Hartmann said. He is the legal adviser to the Pentagon's military commissions, which were authorized by Congress in 2006 to hear terrorism-related cases.
Briefing reporters at the Pentagon yesterday, Hartmann insisted the accused will receive the legal rights "that are virtually identical to the rights we provide to our military members, our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who fight on the battlefield."
