Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks: why their organizers have not yet been brought to justice

Hours before dawn on March 1, 2003, the US scored its most spectacular victory over the masterminds of the September 11 attacks. Intelligence agents pulled Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from hiding in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, reports ABC7.

The global manhunt for Al-Qaeda's No. 3 leader took 18 months. But America's attempt to bring him to justice in a legal sense took much longer. Critics say it was one of the greatest failures of the war on terror.

As the 21st anniversary of the attacks approaches, Mohammed and four other men charged with the 11/XNUMX crimes are still in the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Scheduled court-martial trials are endlessly delayed.

The last failure happened last month. Then the pre-trial hearings scheduled for early autumn were cancelled. This delay was yet another disappointment for relatives of the nearly 3000 victims of the attack. They hoped that the lawsuit would bring an end and possibly resolve the unanswered questions.

“Now I'm not sure that this will happen,” says Gordon Haberman. His 25-year-old daughter Andrea died after a hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center one floor above her office.

He traveled to Guantanamo four times from his home in West Bend, Wisconsin, to personally oversee the trial. But he left disappointed.

“It is important to me that America finally gets to the bottom of the truth about what happened,” Haberman assured. “I personally want this case to go to court.”

If Mohammed is found guilty at trial, he could face the death penalty

When asked about the case, James Connell, a lawyer for one of Mohammed's co-defendants accused of giving money to the 11/XNUMX attackers, confirmed reports that the two sides are still "trying to reach a pre-trial settlement." This can lead to shorter, but still long, sentences.

David Kelly, a former US Attorney in New York, called the delays and failure to prosecute a terrible tragedy for the families of the victims.

He called the attempt to have Mohammed tried by a military tribunal, rather than the normal US court system, a "huge failure." “It is as offensive to our Constitution as it is to our rule of law. This is a huge stain on the history of the country,” he stressed.

Secrets and interrogations

The difficulties with the trial of Mohammed and other detainees at Guantanamo are partly rooted in what the US did to the suspects after their arrests.

Mohammed and his co-defendants were initially held in secret prisons abroad. Hungry for information that could lead to the capture of other al-Qaeda figures, the CIA operatives subjected them to advanced interrogation techniques. They were tantamount to torture, human rights organizations say. Mohammed was tortured with water (made to feel like he was drowning) 183 times.

A Senate investigation later concluded that the interrogations did not produce any valuable intelligence. But it has sparked endless pre-trial litigation over whether the FBI's reports of their statements could be used against them.

The torture allegations raised concerns that the US may have missed its chance to bring Mohammed to a civil court.

On the subject: The United States eliminated the organizer of the September 11 attacks and bin Laden's successor: details of a unique special operation

But in 2009, the administration of President Barack Obama decided to try and announced that Mohammed would be transferred to New York and tried in federal court in Manhattan.

“Failure is not an option,” Obama said.

However, New York declined due to security concerns, and the move never took place. In the end, it was announced that Mohammed would appear before a military tribunal. And then more than a dozen years passed.

Kelly said talk of military tribunals two decades ago surprised many in the legal community. After all, a decade earlier they successfully investigated cases of terrorism. The concept of the tribunal, he says, “came like a bolt from the blue. Nobody knew this would happen.”

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft disapproved of the tribunals and supported the federal prosecution of Manhattan for terrorism. Now, over time, it will be much more difficult to bring Mohammed to justice in the tribunal, let alone in the courtroom. “Evidence gets old, eyewitness memories fail.”

The passage of time has not dulled the memories of the families of the victims.

Eddie Bracken's sister, Lucy Fishman, died at the mall. The New Yorker opposed Obama's proposal to move the trial to federal court. Mohammed is accused of an "act of war" and should be tried by the military, he reasoned. Although he is frustrated by the delays, he still understands them.

“The whole world is looking at us and saying: ‘What are they doing all this time?’” he resents, although he understands that this business is “a process that the whole world sees, and which must be considered under a microscope. The United States needs to be careful, make sure everything is done right.”

“The wheels of justice are turning. Slowly, they turn. And when the time comes and all is said and done, the world will know what happened,” Bracken said.

While Mohammed lingered in Guantanamo Bay, the US killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a 2011 raid, as well as his second-in-command and successor Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a drone strike just this August.

Investigators at the Guantanamo military commission said he had been plotting the 11/19 attacks for three years. They referred to the computer hard drive seized during his arrest. It contained photographs of XNUMX hijackers, three letters from bin Laden, and information about some of the hijackers.

Confessions of a terrorist

Mohammed admitted in a written statement to the tribunal that he swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden

As well as being on the board of al-Qaeda and being bin Laden's director of operations for organizing, planning, following up and executing the 11/XNUMX plot.

According to the statement, he took credit for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the attempt to bring down US jetliners with shoe bombs. And then there's the bombing of a nightclub in Indonesia and plans for a second wave of attacks after the 2001 attacks, targeting landmarks such as Chicago's Sears Tower and Manhattan's Empire State Building.

He claimed responsibility for other planned attacks as well. These included the assassination attempts of then President Bill Clinton in 1994 or 1995 and the plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II.

Mohammed's nearly two decades of legal limbo is different from that of his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Then six people died, another 1000 were injured and a funnel formed in the garage under the twin towers.

Yousef is serving a life sentence after being convicted in two separate civil trials. He was captured in Pakistan in 1995 but brought to the United States for trial.

Terrorists blame the US

At the time, Yousef said that his right to kill people was comparable to the US decision to drop a nuclear bomb during World War II.

Mohammed offered a similar justification, saying through an interpreter at the Guantanamo Bay trial that killing people was "the language of any war."

Bracken traveled to Guantanamo Bay in 2012 to attend the hearing of Mohammed and his co-defendants. And will go there again if the trial ever takes place.

“I don't know if I want to go there again to get all that pain back. But I would go. Yes. My sister would do this for me. She is such a woman,” he concluded, but then corrected himself, “She was such a woman.”