'Mastermind' of 9/11 among Guantanamo Bay suspects who say they want to confess

Published on Monday 8 December 2008 21:08

IN DEFIANCE of US president-elect Barack Obama's pledge to close Guantanamo Bay, the self-styled mastermind of the September 2001 terrorist attacks and four accomplices yesterday told a military judge at the prison camp that they wanted to confess and plead guilty.

Abruptly reversing previous attempts to defend themselves, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants announced at the pretrial hearing they wanted to drop all defence motions.

Mohammed, a Pakistani, and the four others – Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali – were charged earlier this year with conspiring with al-Qaeda to kill civilians.

They face 2,973 counts of murder, one for each person killed when al-Qaeda militants crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

In a letter the judge read aloud in court, the five defendants said they "request an immediate hearing session to announce our confessions".

The defendants said in the note that they made their decision on 4 November, the day Mr Obama was elected to become the next US president. It appeared that they wanted to rush towards convictions before Mr Obama – who has vowed to end the war-crimes trials and close Guantanamo – took office.

Mohammed and another defendant, facing possible death sentences if convicted, said at their arraignment in June they would welcome execution as a path to martyrdom.

But word that they were giving up their defence came as a shock to some of the victims' families – a select group of whom were in court.

Alice Hoagland, of Redwood Estates, California, was there for her son Mark Bingham, who is believed to be one of the passengers who fought hijackers on the United Airlines flight that crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

She said the defendants' announcement was "a real bombshell to me".

She told reporters she hoped Mr Obama, "an even-minded and just man", would ensure the five alleged mass murderers were punished.

The judge, Colonel Stephen Henley, asked Mohammed and his co-defendants if they were prepared to enter a plea. All five said yes, but Col Henley ordered mental competency tests on two of them. Mohammed said they would wait and all plead together.

Mohammed, who has already told interrogators he was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks "from A to Z", told the judge that he had no faith in him, his Pentagon-appointed lawyers or President George Bush.

The pre-trial hearings this week could be the last court appearance for the high-profile detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The first US war-crimes trials since the Second World War are teetering on the edge of extinction.

Mr Obama opposes the military commissions – as the Guantanamo trials are called – and has pledged to close the detention centre holding some 250 men soon after taking office next month.

No trial date has been set, and it is all but certain none will begin before Mr Obama takes office on 20 January. Still, the US military is pressing forward with the case until it receives orders to the contrary.

The military commissions have netted three convictions, but have been widely criticised for allowing statements obtained through harsh interrogations and hearsay to be admitted as evidence.