Judge postpones 9/11 hearings pending defendant’s competency exam
The news
The military judge in the Sept. 11 case postponed this summer’s hearings on Monday, citing a pending review of whether any of the five men charged with conspiracy in the attacks are competent to stand trial.
The judge, Colonel Matthew N. McCall, said in a four-page order that “it would be prudent” to delay testimony and legal arguments until September because a panel of military mental health experts will assess the mental competence of Ramzi bin was already investigating. -Shibh, who is accused of being a deputy sheriff in the plot.
The panel has until July 14 to report its findings. Mr bin al-Shibh’s lawyers had argued that the defendant “cannot participate in hearings on pre-trial motions as long as the issue of his mental capacity to stand trial remains unresolved.”
The first hearings in more than a year were scheduled for July 3-21. Colonel McCall said he would still travel to Guantánamo Bay during the week of July 10 for private meetings with another man accused in the plot, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and his lawyers. The subject of the conversations is unknown, but court records have shown unrest within the legal team of Mr. Hawsawi.
Why it matters: The case has been on hold for over a year.
Under the court’s current timetable, the men charged with plotting the attacks will not return to wartime court until September 18 – after the 22nd anniversary of the attacks by 19 men who hijacked and crashed four passenger jets on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.
If the panel concludes that Mr. bin al-Shibh is unfit for trial, one of the focuses of the fall hearings could be whether prosecutors want to call experts to challenge that finding. Prosecutors have argued in the past that all five men should be tried simultaneously to spare the victims’ families multiple trials.
Background: Prosecutors want support from the White House for a plea deal.
Prosecutors began plea negotiations in March 2022 and have been seeking an answer from the Biden administration for more than a year on whether it supports certain assurances requested by the accused mastermind behind the attack, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and his four co-defendants. Under the proposal, the men would plead guilty to their role in the attack in exchange for a maximum sentence of life in prison, rather than the possibility of the death penalty.
The defendants have asked not to be placed in solitary confinement. They are also calling for a civilian care program to be set up to deal with the effects of their torture during the years they were held in CIA detention before being transferred to Guantánamo Bay in September 2006.
What’s Next: More hearings, possibly on a defendant’s sanity issue.
Prosecutors want to resume testimony from federal agents about their 2007 interrogations of the five men at Guantánamo Bay. Defense attorneys have argued in years of pretrial hearings that those interrogations are tainted by the torture of the defendants in the CIA’s overseas prison network, and the FBI’s collaboration with CIA interrogators in the prisons, known as black sites.
If the panel of experts rules that Mr. bin al-Shibh is not healthy enough for a trial, the judge could also hold a hearing on what measures the military in Guantánamo Bay could take to treat him. Camp 5, where the defendants are being held, has a second-floor psychiatric ward, known as a behavioral health ward, with a padded cell.