GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba: The five men charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks are in a hurry to enter guilty pleas on their apparent quest for martyrdom, with only six weeks remaining before President-elect Barack Obama takes office.
The war-crimes detainees said they decided on Nov. 4 – the day Obama was elected – to abandon their defenses against the capital charges.
Obama opposes the military trials and has pledged to close Guantanamo s detention center, which holds some 250 men.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on Monday told a military judge he will confess to masterminding the attacks that killed 2,975 people, shocking victims relatives who watched from behind a glass partition.
Four other men also abandoned their defenses, in effect daring the Pentagon to grant their wish for martyrdom. The judge ordered lawyers to advise him by Jan. 4 whether the Pentagon can apply the death penalty – which military prosecutors are seeking – without a jury trial.
They were proud to be guilty and that says a lot about them, said Maureen Santora, of Long Island City, New York, whose firefighter son Christopher died responding to the World Trade Center attacks.
Alice Hoagland of Redwood Estates, California, whose son Mark Bingham was on United Flight 93 whose passengers fought hijackers before it crashed in rural Pennsylvania, said the defendants should not be executed and become martyrs.
They do not deserve the glory of executions, Hoagland said. I want these dreadful people to live out their lives in a US prison …. under the control of people they profess to hate.
Early in the day s dramatic turns of events, the five men announced they were abandoning their attempts to mount a vigorous defense, marking an about-face that appeared to take the court by complete surprise. They requested an immediate hearing session to announce our confessions. However, that didn t mean they had repented.
I reaffirm my allegiance to Osama bin Laden, Ramzi Binalshibh blurted out in Arabic at the end of the hearing. I hope the jihad continues and I hope it hits the heart of America with weapons of mass destruction.
The formal confessions were delayed, however, when the judge said two of the defendants couldn t enter pleas until the court determines their mental competency. The other three said they would wait as well.
Our plea request was based on joint strategy, said defendant Ali Abd Al-Aziz Ali.
The judge, Army Col. Stephen Henley, noted that the law specifies that only defendants unanimously convicted by a jury can be sentenced to death in the tribunals. No jury has been seated.
Human rights observers said the judge s uncertainty about sentencing highlights problems with America s first war-crimes trials since World War II, and is further evidence that they should be shut down.
The fact that the judge doesn t know whether they can be sentenced to death in one of the most important trials in US history shows the circus-like atmosphere of the military commissions, said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch. These cases belong in federal court.
Mohammed, who has already told a military panel he was the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, said he has no faith in the judge, his Pentagon-appointed lawyers or President George W. Bush.
