Twenty years to trial

eKhalid Sheikh Mohammed's trial for 911 has been set for January of 2021.   It's nuts.

Preet Bharara and Anne Milgram discuss.

Damn Good Question

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Still Preparing You for the Report

I'd wager one of the main reasons the Senate report is being held up is to allow all the pre-release leaks to numb you. Yeah, yeah. We've heard it already.

The description of the torture meted out to at least two leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or “simulated drowning” so far admitted by the CIA.

“They weren’t just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth,” said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. “They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture.”

  UK Telegraph

What? As opposed to waterboarding or simulated drowning? I guess now we have to move the bar for what constitutes torture again.

Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee that authored the report has promised that it will expose “brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation”.

Apparently the brutality we have already seen does not.

A second source who is familiar with the Senate report told The Telegraph that it contained several unflinching accounts of some CIA interrogations which – the source predicted – would “deeply shock” the general public.

Oh, I doubt it. I think you’re overestimating the humanity of the general public.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Profiles in Courage

Major Jason Wright

There may have been a little hubris involved (the possibility that Major Wright would have been taken off a hig and I don't by any means know that it was.

Last week, Maj. Jason Wright — one of the lawyers defending [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks] — resigned from the Army. He has accused the U.S. government of "abhorrent leadership" on human rights and due process guarantees and says it is crafting a "show trial."

[...]

His former client is one of six "high-value detainees" being prosecuted at Guantanamo for offenses that could carry the death penalty.

"All six of these men have been tortured by the U.S. government," he says.

Wright says Mohammed in particular has faced a level of torture "beyond comprehension." He says his client was waterboarded by the CIA 183 times and subjected to over a week of sleep deprivation; there were threats that his family would be killed. "And those are just the declassified facts that I'm able to actually speak about," Wright says.

[...]

"The 'original sin' being the fact that the CIA tortured these men and that they've gone to extraordinary lengths to try to keep that completely hidden from public view," Wright says. "So the statute that Congress passed has a number of protections to ensure that no information about the U.S. torture program will ever come out."

[...]

"Leave aside our constitutional principles — which we should try to uphold irrespective of who the defendant may be — the Constitution has been completely stepped on throughout this entire process," he says.

[...]

Wright says it doesn't matter what happens at trial; the government likely won't release the defendants even if they are acquitted.

[...]

Earlier this year, the Army instructed Wright to leave the team in order to complete a required graduate course with his promotion from Captain to Major. The course can be deferred for a variety of reasons; Wright had already deferred once. But his latest request for a deferral was denied without explanation.

"So really I only had two choices," he says. "I could either accept and voluntarily leave my own self from the case and my obligations to my client. Or I could refuse the orders."

He decided would be an ethical violation to abandon his client voluntarily, so he refused the orders. "And when you refuse the orders, you have to resign from the Army," he says.

[...]

NPR asked the Pentagon to comment on Wright's interview. A spokesman from the Army wrote:

"The Judge Advocate General denied the second deferral request because a suitable and competent military defense attorney replacement was available, Major Wright was not the lead or sole counsel, and it ensured Major Wright remained professionally competent and competitive for promotion."

And a spokesman for the military commissions also disputes Wright's characterization of the commission, including his allegations of planted listening devices. He wrote:

"The prosecution has never listened to a single attorney-client communication, and no entity of the U.S. government is listening to, monitoring, or recording attorney-client communications at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay."

  NPR

The defense in the 9/11 case has alleged clandestine government interference with legal proceedings. Past hearings at Guantanamo have shown that listening devices were planted in rooms where lawyers and prisoners met, and that someone outside the court had a kill switch that cut the closed-circuit broadcast feed of the trial when secret CIA prisons were mentioned. In addition, the defense has alleged spying in the case, claiming the FBI propositioned a defense team security officer to be a confidential informant.

  RT

I would suggest that now Major Wright should turn whistleblower and reveal those torture tactics he has been forbidden to discuss, but I don't think the American public would care enough for it to make any difference, and it would further harm Major Wright.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Jury Will Disregard Defendant's Statement

And the reporter will strike it from the record.

Ooops.  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the "9/11 mastermind") was allowed a statement before his trial begins.

"When the government feels sad for the death, the killing of 300 people killed on September 11th, we should also feel sorry that the American government represented by General Martins [chief prosecutor in the case against Mohammed] and others have killed thousands of people. Millions." 

Mohammed continued on to reference the April 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, saying, "Many can kill people under the name of national security, and to torture people under the name of national security and defame children under the name of national security - underage children - I don't want to be long but I can say that the President can take someone and throw him under the sea in the name of national security. And so he can also legislate assassinations under the name of national security for American nationals, American citizens."

[...]

He ended with a plea to the judge: "My only advice to you that you do not get affected by the crocodile tears.  Because your blood is not made out of gold and ours is not made out of water. We are all human beings."

[...]

Judge Pohl, too, appeared stunned, noting that while he didn't interrupt Mohammed, this sort of speech was a one-time occurrence not normal to the proceedings. He said: "I'm not going to again entertain personal comments of the accused of the way things are going. This is his personal thought; he has the right to that opinion but he doesn't have the right to interrupt proceedings. This is not to be interpreted as this is an acceptable procedure. This was a one-time thing for Mr. Mohammed.

  alJazeera