The Obama administration wisely is considering moving from Manhattan the trial of five September 11 conspirators, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Team Obama
’s original idea of trying Team al-Qaeda in civilian court cannot be scrapped soon enough
. In fact, Team Obama should abandon its plans to try Team al-Qaeda in civilian court. Instead, KSM and his Islamofascist brethren should stay at Guantanamo and get what they want: execution.
These al-Qaeda leaders — KSM, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Walid Bin Attash, and KSM’s two nephews, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali — already offered to plead guilty.
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“We all five have reached an agreement to request from the commission an immediate hearing session in order to announce our confessions and plea in full,” they stated in a letter that military judge Colonel Stephen Henley read aloud at a Dec. 8, 2008, Guantanamo hearing.
The terrorists expressed “our earnest desire in this regard without being under any kind of pressure, threat, intimidations or promise from any party.” The al-Qaeda bigwigs also asked to drop their defense motions.
Henley wondered if they were ready to plead guilty to all charges.
“Yes,” KSM replied. “We don’t want to waste time.”
Ali assured Henley that KSM did not coerce his fellow terrorists into confessing. “All of these decisions were undertaken by us without any pressure or influence by Khalid Sheikh,” Ali said. “What was said or will be said by Khalid Sheikh will be repeated by us, also.”
Rather than grant the defendants’ wishes, Henley slowed matters by ordering psychiatric examinations of bin al-Shibh and al-Hawsawi. “We want everyone to plead together,” KSM then responded.
Hamilton Peterson, whose parents were killed on September 11 on United Flight 93, witnessed this proceeding. He was stunned that “not only do the defendants comprehend their extensive rights,” Peterson told the Associated Press, “they are explicitly asking the court to hurry up because they are bored with the due process they are receiving.”
KSM et al
. celebrate their plot that killed 2,980 and injured 7,356. And they dream of further barbarism. Calling themselves “The 9/11 Shura Council,” they wrote in a March 5, 2009 tribunal filing:
Your intelligence apparatus, with all its abilities, human and logistical, had failed to discover our military attack plans before the blessed 11 September operation. They were unable to foil our attack. . . .
We will make all of our materials available, to defend and deter, and egress you and the filthy Jews from our countries. . . .
So we ask from God to accept our contributions to the great attack, the great attack on America, and to place our nineteen martyred brethren among the highest peaks in paradise. . . .
