‘Architect’ of 9/11 to go on trial

Tim Shipman
London Telegraph
Sunday, Dec 07, 2008

On Monday morning, a heavily built man will be led from a concrete cell, whose slit window overlooks the Caribbean, by soldiers whose name tags have been removed from their uniforms and replaced with a Velcro strip reading: “I don’t know.”

He will be taken to a high security courtroom to sit beside four co-defendants and a glass wall – all that will separate him from 10 families who lost loved ones in the terrorist atrocities which he is accused of masterminding.

This moment will mark the onset of five days of trial hearings against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-styled architect of the September 11th attacks and once the number three in al-Qaeda’s hierarchy. The guards at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the scene of the military tribunal, will be anonymous to prevent reprisal attacks on their families.

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This moment will be filled with meaning for President George W Bush’s Administration, which will have just 43 days left in power; for Barack Obama, who has vowed to close the camp, and for Alice Hoagland, who will sit behind the screen looking at the man responsible for the death of her son, Mark Bingham. He died on United Flight 93, which plunged into the Pennsylvania countryside as its passengers tried to take back the hijacked aircraft.

The arraigning of “KSM”, as the primary defendant is known in security circles, is the terrorism trial of the decade. This ought to be a moment of catharsis for America.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The Supreme Court ruled in June that the Guantanamo detainees have a right to go before federal judges. But the Bush administration pushed through the trial of its most notorious captive so it could open before the president leaves the White House next month.

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