September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed facing death penalty

He was tortured by “waterboarding” 183 times – more than any other
Guantánamo detainee. The controversial technique in which water is poured on
a suspect’s face to simulate drowning, has since been banned by the Obama
administration.

Mohammed will appear in court at the base for arraignment within 30 days,
alongside Saudi Arabians Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ramzi bin
al-Shibh of Yemen and Pakistani Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali. Their full trials are
then expected to commence within months.

The fate of the five men will ultimately be decided by a jury of 12 military
officers drawn from across America’s armed forces. Under US military law,
the officers must vote unanimously for the death penalty to be imposed.

Mr Obama’s aides will hope that the trial, which is set to commence amid his
likely election campaign against Mitt Romney, will boost his chances of
being returned to the White House by highlighting his crackdown on al-Qaeda
and the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

In an attempt to move away from the controversial military tribunals, which
were created by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks, Mr
Obama originally made a high-profile effort to hold the trials in New York’s
civilian courts.

However, the notion that Mohammed should be brought within feet of the site
where his alleged attack killed thousands under the collapsed towers of the
World Trade Centre prompted outrage among Republicans, who blocked the plans
in Congress.

After his capture in Pakistan in 2003, Mohammed was transferred over the next
three years between a series of secret American bases around the world, as
the CIA interrogated him for information on al-Qaeda’s international terror
network.

Moved to Guantánamo Bay in 2006, he allegedly accepted full responsibility the
following year for September 11 and more than a dozen other plots, including
plans to assassinate Pope John Paul II and former US presidents Bill Clinton
and Jimmy Carter.

Mohammed is also alleged to have boasted that he personally beheaded Daniel
Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped in Pakistan
in 2002, with his “blessed right hand”.

Prosecutors allege that for two years Mohammed was in frequent contact with
Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 19 September 11 hijackers. He is alleged to
have provided Atta and his team with money before giving the orders to go
ahead with the “Planes Operation”.

After being pictured overweight, dishevelled and confused in a much-reproduced
photograph taken as he was captured, Mohammed has since appeared at hearings
looking thin and wearing a long beard. “I’m not making myself a hero,
when I said I was responsible for this or that,” he told a June 2008
hearing. “I’m looking to be a martyr for long time.”

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