September 12, (THEWILL) – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, along with four co-defendants appeared in a military courtroom at Guantanamo Bay this week for the first time since the Coronavirus pandemic began.
The aging Mohammed, now 57 years old, his long beard tinted orange, smiled and gestured with his four co-defendants – all kept outside the courtroom in isolation at the high-security United States prison.
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, and Abd al-Aziz Ali and Mohammed face the death penalty in a trial by military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay that has yet to start and remains bogged in process 20 years after the attacks.
The five are accused of war crimes in the September 11 aircraft hijackings that resulted in the deaths of 2,976 people.
A new military judge has been assigned to the trial, previously expected to start in 2022 but now likely to be further delayed as lawyers for the defence prepare to attack the legal foundation of the military commission.
“These proceedings are grotesquely substandard under notions of due process, international law, and … regard for the dignity of human beings,” said Gary Sowards, who took the lead on Mohammed’s defence in 2019.
Mohammed’s legal team would be filing a series of motions designed to challenge the legitimacy of the military commissions and bring to light the CIA’s torture of Mohammed and other detainees, Sowards said on Wednesday.
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