Tag: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (page 2)

At his arraignment today, Khalid Sheik Mohammed sang in court, praised Allah and said he welcomed the death penalty so he would be a martyr.

He has rejected his attorneys and says he wants to represent himself.

My shield is Allah most high," he said, adding that his religion forbade him from accepting a lawyer from the United States and that he wanted to act as his own attorney .

Shades of Zacarias Moussaoui, who having been tried in federal court, is now serving life at Supermax. Moussaoui has a chance to appeal. If Mohammed stays on this course, he'll be dead. [Update below]

Alleged "9/11 Mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is being arraigned today at Guantanamo. The ACLU is on scene and will be reporting.

The ACLU has committed $15 million to a joint project with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to provide adequate representation to Mohammed and other Gitmo detainees facing unfair trials under the Military Commissions Act.

Trial by military commission permit convictions based on secret evidence, hearsay, and evidence derived from torture – including waterboarding, a technique the government admits was used on Mohammed. [More...]

Jane Mayer in The New Yorker Magazine today exposes the torturous interrogation practices the C.I.A. used on its prize detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, during his not-so secret stay in an overseas prison.

Author Jane Mayer, on the CBS Evening News, said:

"The Red Cross went in and got to interview these people for the first time," said Mayer on the CBS Evening News. "What these people described was hanging from the ceilings by their arms and being water-boarded, partially drowned, put on leashes and knocked into walls and basically deprived of all kinds of sensory imagery for years."

The article also puts the lie to President Bush's continuous insistence that the U.S. does not engage in torture.

Mayer's article further described the CIA program of physical and psychological abuse as completely regimented and deliberate.

"There have always been mistakes made in the past when prisoners have been abused in wars," Mayer told Mitchell. "But this is the first time it's been done on purpose."

More...

We're shocked that this hasn't gotten more coverage. We are outraged. The CIA has acknowledged that last September, the seven and nine year old sons of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, arrested last week and alleged to be a "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks, were seized by Pakistani authorites, and that this weekend, the kids were turned over to the CIA and then flown to America so that the young boys could be interrogated in an undisclosed location about their father's activities and used to get their father to talk.

Yousef al-Khalid, 9, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, 7, were taken into custody in Pakistan in September when intelligence officers raided an apartment in Karachi where their father had been hiding.

He fled just hours before the raid, but his two young sons, along with another senior al Qaeda member, were found cowering behind a clothes closet in the apartment.

The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities, but this weekend they were flown to America, where they will be questioned about their father.

CIA interrogators confirmed last night that the boys were staying at a secret address where they were being encouraged to talk about their father's activities.... [Mohammed] has been told that his sons are being held and is being encouraged to divulge future attacks against the West and talk about the location of Osama bin Laden, officials said.

"His sons are important to him. The promise of their release and their return to Pakistan may be the psychological lever we need to break him."

First, let's translate. The operative and missing word from that last sentence is "safe." As in what Mohammed is really being told is that something awful will befall his sons if he doesn't cooperate. Legal? Probably. It's also morally bankrupt. But let's leave the father out of this for the moment. Our concern is the kids.

Isn't this kidnapping? How about a human rights violation? What kind of precedent does this set? Seven and nine years old -- has this Administration lost its mind?

We didn't realize that enemy combatant status was hereditary. A lawyer and a guardian ad litem should be appointed for these kids immediately. The kids should be returned home without delay to whatever family they have left. This is taking "sins of the father" to an unprecedented and unconscionable level.