Accused 9/11 plotters say they want to confess

[December 09, 2008]  GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks say they want to enter guilty pleas, apparently challenging the U.S. government to sentence them to death before President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

The Guantanamo detainees said they decided on Nov. 4 -- the day Obama was elected -- to abandon their defenses in their death-penalty trials. Obama opposes the military war-crimes trials and has pledged to close Guantanamo's detention center, which holds some 250 men.

Mohammed said Monday he will confess to masterminding the attacks that killed 2,975 people. The four other defendants did the same, in effect daring the Pentagon to give them death sentences.

The judge ordered lawyers to advise him by Jan. 4 whether the Pentagon can apply the death penalty -- which military prosecutors are seeking -- without a jury trial.

Mohammed, who has already told a military panel he was the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, said he has no faith in the judge, his Pentagon-appointed lawyers or President George W. Bush.

Sporting a chest-length gray beard, Mohammed told the judge in English: "I don't trust you."

The defendants' announcement shocked victims' relatives who watched from behind a glass partition, the first time family members have been allowed to observe the war-crimes trials.

Alice Hoagland of Redwood Estates, Calif., told reporters that she hopes Obama, "an even-minded and just man," would ensure the five men are punished, though she believes they should not be executed and become martyrs.

Hoagland's son, Mark Bingham, died on United Flight 93, whose passengers fought hijackers before it crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

"They do not deserve the glory of executions," Hoagland said. "I want these dreadful people to live out their lives in a U.S. prison ... under the control of people they profess to hate."

But Hamilton Peterson, of Bethesda, Md., and whose father and stepmother died on United 93, said the defendants showed a "complete lack of contrition" and deserved to be executed.

Maureen Santora, of Long Island City, N.Y., watched from the back of the courtroom, wearing black and clutching a photo of her son Christopher, a firefighter who died responding to the World Trade Center attacks.

"They were proud to be guilty and that says a lot about them," she said.

At a press conference after the hearing, her husband Alexander held up photos of firefighters, his eyes brimming with tears.

"I know my son is with us," he said, his voice thick. He wore a New York Fire Department cap.

Early in the day's dramatic turns of events, the five men announced they were abandoning their attempts to mount a vigorous defense, marking an about-face that appeared to take the court by complete surprise. They requested "an immediate hearing session to announce our confessions."

However, that didn't mean they had repented.

"I reaffirm my allegiance to Osama bin Laden," Ramzi Binalshibh blurted out in Arabic at the end of the hearing. "I hope the jihad continues and I hope it hits the heart of America with weapons of mass destruction."

The formal confessions were delayed, however, when the judge said two of the defendants couldn't enter pleas until the court determines their mental competency. The other three said they would wait as well.

"Our plea request was based on joint strategy," said defendant Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali.

The judge, Army Col. Stephen Henley, noted that the law specifies that only defendants unanimously convicted by a jury can be sentenced to death in the tribunals. No jury has been seated.

Army Col. Lawrence Morris, the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo tribunals, said he expects a jury would be created to hear evidence in a sentencing phase of the trial and would decide on what punishment to mete out to the defendants.

Human rights observers said the judge's uncertainty about sentencing highlights problems with America's first war-crimes trials since World War II, and is further evidence that they should be shut down.

"The fact that the judge doesn't know whether they can be sentenced to death in one of the most important trials in U.S. history shows the circus-like atmosphere of the military commissions," said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch. "These cases belong in federal court."

[Associated Press; By ANDREW O. SELSKY]

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.