GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — Five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks turned what might have been their last appearance before a Guantanamo court Monday into a tribute to Osama bin Laden and a call on fellow holy warriors to strike the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators renewed their vows to die as martyrs at the hands of the U.S. military, offering to plead guilty and dispense with pretrial matters to hasten their execution.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, December 10, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 34 words Type of Material: Correction
Guantanamo Bay: An article in Tuesday's Section A about the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, incorrectly gave the name of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.
Mohammed mocked the tribunal for its bureaucracy and dismissed his Navy lawyer for having served in Iraq, where U.S. troops have been "killing our brothers and sisters."
But given the chance to enter pleas later in the day, Mohammed and two others declined because they were concerned that pleading guilty without a military jury present might make them ineligible for a sentence of death.
The judge newly assigned to the Sept. 11 defendants' case, Army Col. Stephen R. Henley, asked government lawyers whether rules for the military commissions, as the trials are known, allowed him to find the men guilty.
The law enacted by Congress two years ago calls for a military jury of at least 12 members to sentence a defendant to death. No jury has been assembled because the court had expected to address only pretrial issues this week. The proceedings are the last scheduled before the Bush administration leaves office.
The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence J. Morris, said the confusion about the death penalty arose because the Uniformed Code of Military Justice that governs military courts-martial prohibits guilty pleas in capital cases to protect defendants from being railroaded to execution.
Henley also declined to allow two of the men, Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, to represent themselves until the court reviews their psychiatric evaluations.
Upon learning that they wouldn't be allowed to enter their pleas together, the five said they would wait until they could stick with their strategy of united action.
In a dramatic finale to a day in court that was watched by nine people who lost loved ones in the attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon, Binalshibh proclaimed the defendants' allegiance to Bin Laden and his international jihad against the U.S.
