USA - Pentagon files death penalty case against five accused 9/11 plotters

Pentagon files death penalty case against five accused 9/11 plotters. Guantánamo war court prosecutors filed fresh death penalty charges against 5 men for allegedly plotting the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, accusing the former CIA captives of murder, conspiracy and terrorism. The new charge sheet reflected a political setback for the Obama administration, which not only came in to office pledging to close the prison camps in southeast Cuba that today hold 171 foreign men as war prisoners but also decided after study to have a civilian judge and jury hear the 9/11 trial in New York. Politicians and some 9/11 families protested the scheme, fearing that a trial would make Manhattan an even greater al Qaeda target and that the accused may draw on greater due process in a federal court. The 90-page charge sheet spells out the roles each of the 5 men allegedly had in preparing for four simultaneous hijackings of American passenger planes that crashed in New York, at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., and in a field Shanksville, Penn. The charge sheets also includes the names of all 2,976 people who were killed that day. Charged are: Khalid Sheik Mohammed, 46, the Pakistani former al Qaeda operations chief who in 2007 bragged to a military panel at the U.S. Navy base that he ran the 9/11 operation “from A to Z.” Walid bin Attash, 32, a Yemeni. According to the charge sheets, he allegedly ran a combat class at an al Qaeda training camp in Logan, Afghanistan to help select candidates for the hijacking. Ammar al Baluchi, 33, also a Pakistani, Mohammed’s nephew. Ramzi bin al Shibh, 39, a Yemeni who blurted out at an earlier hearing that he sought to be the 20th Hijacker in the 9/11 attacks, but failed in efforts to obtain a U.S. visa while living in Germany. Mustafa al Hawsawi, 42, Saudi, who allegedly functioned as a financier for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers. It is not known how any Guantánamo death penalty would be carried out. The Military Commission manual leaves that decision up to the Secretary of Defense.