You'll Never Guess What's Holding Up the 9/11 Trial at Guantanamo
It rhymes with scorcher!
With all due respect to the 2002 death of NFL legend Johnny Unitas and the 1709 Battle of Malplaquet during the War of the Spanish Succession both, if you forced me to choose, I’d say the absolute worst September 11th of all-time was the one that happened in 2001.
It’s so memorable that one only need say “9/11” and people instantly know which one you’re talking about. Even if you weren’t alive when it happened, you’re still expected to never forget.
Well, we’re expected to never forget the event itself. The crashing of the planes into the towers and the death and destruction and tragedy that followed. That is to be seared into our collective memories for eternity.
However, if you want to forget that more than two decades later, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, has yet to stand trial? The American government would probably not mind that one bit!
It’s hard to believe, but it’s true that KSH and his alleged accomplices, currently named as Walid Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa al Hawsawi, have been locked up in Guantanamo Bay since 2006.
They are three of the approximately 30 men still detained at the prison island we vowed to close during the Obama days until we realized some of the people held there would have to be transferred to facilities in the United States. Not bringing detainees to American soil was always kinda the point of Guantanamo. You have to follow laws if you bring them here. Gross!
Against all odds, it seemed like a resolution was on the horizon recently. You know that thing our government likes to say about not negotiating with terrorists? Not true. If we didn’t negotiate with terrorists, the Reagan movie wouldn’t be in theaters right now, and that’s just one example.
It seems like negotiating with the alleged 9/11 conspirators is something America is open to now as well.
On July 31, the Department of Defense announced that a plea deal had been reached with three of the remaining 9/11 defendants. In exchange for guilty pleas, the US agreed to not impose the death penalty. Beyond that, the details of the agreement were not released.
It was a polarizing announcement, to say the least. While some 9/11 families were fine with the deal, several others were not, and they spoke up about it loudly and immediately.
After three days of debate and consternation, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III stepped in and revoked the plea deal and put the death penalty back on the table as a future possibility.
The Defense Department lawyer who approved the deal kept her job but was barred from negotiating or approving any further deals in the 9/11 case.
So, that explains what happened to the plea deal that was almost approved earlier this year, but what explains why there still hasn’t been a trial more than two decades later?
A few paragraphs back, I mentioned that the 9/11 defendants have been at Guantanamo since 2006. Eagle-eyed readers will note that is a full five years after the 9/11 attacks. Where were they before that? No one but the CIA can tell us for sure!
Before being taken to Guantanamo, detainees were held at CIA black sites where they were brutally tortured. I know it sounds crazy, but from all indications it seems like Guantanamo Bay is where we sent these prisoners to take it easy on them. The black sites are where the CIA tortured information out of them, Guantanamo is where the FBI tried to good cop the exact same confessions out of them. That doesn’t sound human experiment-y at all!
The point of all of that, of course, is that confessions elicited under heinous torture have a tendency to not hold up in court. Which brings us to the real reason this trial has been delayed for longer than several people you probably know have been alive. I’m guessing it doubles as the reason why the government considered a plea deal at all.
If you were one of those people who opined that torture was a necessary evil when it comes to fighting the war on terror back in the day, I hope you are disappointed to find out that all of those water boardings you cheered for are exactly why the death penalty so many people seek is unlikely to ever happen.
The three defendants who would’ve been subject to this plea deal were five defendants back when the case started. One of the other two, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, has already been deemed incompetent to stand trial on account of the diminished mental state years of CIA torture left him in.
The other, Ammar al-Baluchi, is the inspiration behind the 25-minute torture scene at the beginning of the film Zero Dark Thirty. So, you can take a guess as to what kind of shape he’s in these days.
While there have been lots of other legal twists and turns over the years, if you’re looking for one main culprit behind the delay in a legal conclusion to the 9/11 case, the torture is your demon. To put it as plainly as possible, we went so overboard in torturing confessions out of these people, we’ve spent the 20+ years since arguing in court about whether we can ever believe anything any of them said.
Pretty crazy, huh? Anyway, check out Kiefer Sutherland reprising his role as torture-lovin’ counterterrorism expert Jack Bauer when the 24 movie hits theaters soon!