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☆ Sept. 11 Trial Plea Negotiations Still Underway at Guantánamo Bay
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-01 | by ( Carol Rosenberg | More About Carol Rosenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Prosecutors and defense lawyers are still negotiating toward a plea agreement for the men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks despite the Biden administration’s refusal to endorse certain proposed conditions, the lead prosecutor said in court on Wednesday at Guantánamo Bay. “This is all whirling around us,” said Clayton G. Trivett Jr., the prosecutor, discussing key details of the negotiations in open court for the first time. He added that “around the edges we have agreed to do things” and that “the positions that we took at the time are still available.”In mostly secret negotiations in 2022 and 2003, prosecutors offered to drop the death penalty from the case in exchange for detailed admissions by the accused architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and four other men who are charged as his accomplices in the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people. Since then, one of the five men has been ruled not mentally competent to stand trial. The occasion of the briefing was a legal filing by lawyers for Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the defendants and Mr. Mohammed’s nephew, asking the judge to dismiss the case or at least the possibility of a death penalty because of real or apparent political interference by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and other members of Congress last summer.

Persons: Biden, ”, Clayton G, Trivett Jr, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ammar al, Mohammed’s, Ted Cruz Organizations: Republican Locations: Guantánamo, Texas

☆ Families Head to Guantánamo Bay Seeking Justice in Bali Bombing Case
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-19 | by ( Carol Rosenberg | More About Carol Rosenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Frank Heffernan thought his daughter Megan was in South Korea where she was working as an English teacher when he heard the news of a devastating terrorist attack on the Indonesian island of Bali on Oct. 12, 2002. She had gone there with friends on a vacation. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her,” said Mr. Heffernan, mopping his eyes with a tissue at his home in Florida. In the random, cruel fashion of terrorism, the bombing killed tourists and workers from 22 nations who happened to be in a commercial district, including 38 Indonesians. Among the dead were Australian and British citizens who were there for a rugby match, Americans passionate about surfing — and Megan and two Korean friends, who were out sightseeing when the bombs exploded.

Persons: Frank Heffernan, Megan, Megan Heffernan, ”, Heffernan Organizations: State Department, Al Locations: South Korea, Indonesian, Bali, Alaska, Al Qaeda, Florida

☆ Where the 9/11 Dead Are Not Forgotten at Guantánamo Bay
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-18 | by ( Carol Rosenberg | More About Carol Rosenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But pretrial proceedings for four men accused of conspiring in the plot are now in their second decade. For most hearings, the prosecutors bring about 10 people who were injured or lost family members in the attacks to watch the proceedings. Over the years, more than 150 of the people who were killed on Sept. 11 have been represented in the hearings by relatives. Some family members have come looking for answers about why the United States was so vulnerable then. Some come simply to represent a loved one who was killed in an attack that, for some Americans, has become as distant as the one at Pearl Harbor.

Persons: Osama Locations: U.S, United States, Pearl

☆ U.S. Offers Tapes From Bugged Guantánamo Prison Yard as Evidence in 9/11 Case
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Carol Rosenberg | More About Carol Rosenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The move comes as prosecutors have considered new ways to counter claims by defense lawyers that torture by the C.I.A. interrogations of Mr. Mohammed and his accused accomplices to produce confessions the government considers its most important trial evidence. It also shed light on an eavesdropping operation whose existence has until now never been formally acknowledged. vouched for a transcript of Mr. Mohammed describing how he learned when the hijackers would strike. Under a classified prison program, more than a dozen suspected terrorists, who had been subjected to years of solitary confinement and tortured by the C.I.A., were granted an hour of recreation time in earshot of another isolated prisoner.

Persons: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Mohammed Locations: Iraqi American, Guantánamo, earshot

☆ Judge Severs Man Accused in the 9/11 Attacks From Guantánamo Trial
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-21 | by ( Carol Rosenberg | More About Carol Rosenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

A military judge ruled on Thursday that a defendant in the Sept. 11 case who was tortured by the C.I.A. was ineligible for a death-penalty trial, adopting a finding that the prisoner was too psychologically damaged to help defend himself. Col. Matthew N. McCall, the judge, disqualified Ramzi bin al-Shibh, 51, from what had been a five-defendant conspiracy case in an 11-page ruling on Thursday evening. Mr. bin al-Shibh was charged as an accomplice in the attacks that killed 2,976 people, and is accused of helping organize a cell of hijackers in Hamburg, Germany, whose leader commandeered Flight No. 11 and flew it into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Persons: Matthew N, McCall, Ramzi bin al, bin, Shibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Organizations: World Trade Locations: Hamburg, Germany

☆ Sanity Question and Plea Talks Shadow Coming Sept. 11 Hearings
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-11 | by ( Carol Rosenberg | More About Carol Rosenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Prosecutors have issued a new deadline — Sept. 18 — for four detainees at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to show their willingness to plead guilty to plotting the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and receive a maximum punishment of life in prison. The fifth defendant in the case has been found incompetent to stand trial and is likely to be removed from the case. Without a challenge, the judge is expected to sever him from the case when hearings resume next week after a 22-month hiatus. They describe the deadline as driven by the scheduled Oct. 7 departure of the current overseer of the case, Jeffrey D. Wood. In March 2022, Mr. Wood authorized prosecutors to pursue guilty pleas that would spare the defendants a capital trial to resolve the long-running case.

Persons: Ramzi bin al, Prosecutors, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Jeffrey D, Wood Organizations: Mr Locations: Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

☆ How a Judge’s Ruling on Torture Imperils a Guantánamo Prosecution Strategy
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-26 | by ( Carol Rosenberg | More About Carol Rosenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In late 2006, in an effort to turn the page on a legacy of state-sponsored torture, prosecutors for the George W. Bush administration began an experiment at Guantánamo Bay. They set up teams of law enforcement officers to try to obtain voluntary confessions from men who had spent years in brutal conditions in isolated C.I.A. A military judge declared that experiment a failure, at least in one case. In a wide-ranging ruling, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr. threw out a confession that federal agents at Guantánamo Bay obtained in 2007 from a Saudi prisoner who is accused of plotting the suicide bombing of the U.S.S. But Mr. Nashiri, who was arrested in 2002, had spent four years in secret C.I.A.

Persons: George W, Bush, Lanny J, Acosta Jr, Cole, Abd al, Rahim, Nashiri, ” Organizations: Saudi Locations: Aden, Yemen, U.S

☆ Man Accused in 9/11 Plot Is Not Fit to Face Trial, Board Says
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-25 | by ( Carol Rosenberg | More About Carol Rosenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The finding is the latest setback to prosecution efforts to bring the long-running capital cases at Guantánamo Bay to trial. Last week, a military judge threw out the confession of a man accused of plotting the U.S.S. The question of Mr. bin al-Shibh’s sanity, and capacity to help his lawyers defend him, has shadowed the Sept. 11 conspiracy case since his first court appearance in 2008. He has disrupted pretrial hearings over the years with outbursts, and in court and in filings complained that the C.I.A. The five men are accused of conspiring in the plane hijackings in 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

Persons: Ramzi bin al, bin, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Organizations: Pentagon Locations: Cole, New York City, Pennsylvania

☆ The Long, Lonely Wait for Justice for 17 Fallen U.S. Sailors
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-15 | by ( Carol Rosenberg | More About Carol Rosenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the nearly 12 years since a prisoner was charged in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole warship, eight parents of the 17 fallen American sailors have died waiting for a trial to begin. Late this June, just two members of that group were there — a sailor’s father and a naval officer who survived the blast. The bombing of the Cole never garnered the attention of Guantánamo’s better-known prosecution of the five men who are accused of plotting the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the Cole attack came first, on Oct. 12, 2000.

Persons: Cole, Guantánamo’s Locations: U.S, Ukraine

☆ Court Rejects New Sentencing for Al Qaeda Recruiter
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-26 | by ( Carol Rosenberg | More About Carol Rosenberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected a bid by a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo Bay to have a new military jury reconsider his life sentence for conspiring to commit war crimes as a propaganda chief for Al Qaeda and an aide to Osama bin Laden. Earlier appeals struck down two of the three crimes for which Ali Hamza al-Bahlul was convicted in 2008. His lawyer, Michel Paradis, had argued that a new sentencing jury should be assembled at the base to hear evidence and arguments on whether his remaining conspiracy conviction deserved a lesser sentence. Mr. Paradis also sought reconsideration of the sentence because, a year after Mr. Bahlul’s trial, Guantánamo’s military commission system was overhauled to explicitly prohibit the use of evidence “obtained by the use of torture or by cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the sentence should stand and that the prisoner’s lawyers brought up the question of torture too late in the appellate process.

Persons: Osama bin Laden, Ali Hamza al, Bahlul, Michel Paradis, Paradis, Bahlul’s, “, ” Organizations: Al, U.S ., Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit Locations: Guantánamo, Al Qaeda

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