Pentagon seeks death penalty for 9/11 terrorists

The Pentagon announced Monday  it was charging six detainees at Guantanamo Bay with murder and war crimes in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials said they’ll seek the death penalty in what would be the first trials under the terrorism-era military tribunal system, according to The Associated Press.

The most famous of the six men is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed is the self-proclaimed mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. It was his idea to use airliners as weapons against American civilian targets. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured by the United States in 2003 and has been in American custody ever since.
He is one of only three al-Qaeda detainees to be waterboarded by U.S. intelligence agents according to the CIA. Mohammed is currently being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba.

The other five men being charged are: Mohammed al-Qahtani, the man officials have labeled the 20th hijacker; Ramzi Binalshibh, said to have been the main intermediary between the hijackers and leaders of Al Qaeda; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, who has been identified as Mohammed’s lieutenant for the 2001 operation; al-Baluchi’s assistant, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi; and Waleed bin Attash, a detainee known as Khallad, who investigators say selected and trained some of the hijackers, according to the AP.

“The decision to seek the death penalty is in keeping with the administration’s declared intent to hold the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks fully accountable,” said Sven Dubie, professor of history at John Carroll University. “However, by seeking to impose the maximum penalty, they have all but guaranteed the process will be long, complex and fraught with peril given its severity, invariably invites a more rigorous judicial process than crimes with lesser charges.”
White House press secretary  Dana Perino said that President Bush had no role in the decision to seek the death penalty. “Obviously, 9/11 was a defining moment in our history,” she said, “and a defining moment in the global war on terror. And this judicial process is the next step in that story. The president is sure that the military is going to follow through in a way that the Congress said they should.”

Turning to Iraq, recent documents found in Iraq suggest that al-Qaeda in that country face an “extraordinary crisis,” according to the AP. Last year’s mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the U.S. military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight,” in the group, according to the document. The terrorist group’s security structure suffered “total collapse.”

These are the words not of al-Qaeda’s enemies, but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group’s stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a U.S. raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November, according to The UK Times Online. U.S. intelligence officials cautioned, however, that the documents were snapshots of two small areas and that al-Qaeda was far from a spent force, according to The UK Times Online.