This text was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Middle on Disaster Reporting.The navy choose overseeing the Sept. 11 case at Guantánamo Bay
This text was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Middle on Disaster Reporting.
The navy choose overseeing the Sept. 11 case at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba delayed litigation deadlines once more on Friday, suspending the beginning of the trial of the accused mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and 4 accused co-conspirators till after the 20th anniversary of the assaults subsequent 12 months.
The dying penalty case, in its eighth 12 months of pretrial proceedings, was already sophisticated by its distant location, procedural points, authorized challenges and the management of labeled proof by totally different parts of the U.S. authorities.
“The coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic has continued to worsen,” the choose, Col. Douglas Okay. Watkins of the Military, wrote in a two-page order that prolonged deadlines for one more 30 days, for a complete of 300 days of delay for the reason that begin of the pandemic.
Based mostly on the timetable towards trial set by a earlier choose, the number of the navy officers for the jury will now begin on Nov. 7, 2021, on the earliest.
The pandemic has paralyzed a lot of the work of the court docket, whose members commute from the mainland to the navy commissions courtroom in Cuba for every session. The final listening to within the case was held in February by Decide W. Shane Cohen, who abruptly introduced his retirement a month later and has taken a place as a deputy district lawyer in Salt Lake County, Utah.
Hijackers seized management of 4 industrial plane on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed them into the World Commerce Middle, the Pentagon and right into a Pennsylvania subject, killing 2,976 folks. Mr. Mohammed, his nephew and three different males are accused of organizing the plot by coaching or deciding on the hijackers or by helping them to achieve the USA with financing and journey preparations.
Up to now, six judges have served on the case for the reason that defendants have been arraigned in 2012. Decide Watkins, who’s the chief navy commissions choose and is predicated at Fort Hood, Texas, is now presiding after twice attempting to exchange Colonel Cohen.
In October, he assigned Lt. Col. Matthew N. McCall of the Air Pressure to preside, however prosecutors protested that Colonel McCall was unqualified to serve as a result of he had served lower than two years as a choose within the navy’s court-martial system, a prerequisite for presiding at a navy fee. A current court docket submitting confirmed that, after prosecutors protested, Colonel Watkins sought a written waiver of the requirement from the Deputy Secretary of Protection, David L. Norquist, who refused.
Earlier, a Marine choose with childhood ties to New York Metropolis, Col. Stephen F. Keane, acquired the project however recused himself inside weeks after discovering “a major private connection to individuals who have been immediately affected by the occasions of 9/11.”
The pandemic has pressured cancellation of all hearings within the case, which recessed within the midst of the choose taking in depth testimony on the query of whether or not key interrogations of the prisoners at Guantánamo in 2007 are inadmissible at trial as a result of they’re tainted by C.I.A. torture.
The pandemic has sophisticated different elements of making ready for the joint conspiracy trial.
One of many accused, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, has not but met his death-penalty lawyer, who was assigned to the case in April. The lawyer, David I. Bruck, has stated in a court docket submitting that, as soon as he has met with Mr. bin al-Shibh, he would wish 30 months to organize for trial.
One choice can be to drop Mr. bin al-Shibh from the case, and provides him a separate trial later, one thing the primary choose did for a time in 2014 earlier than reversing himself as a result of the prosecutors objected. Even so, the most recent litigation order postpones the beginning of any model of the case till November on the earliest.