GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — The world's most notorious jailed terrorist calmly stroked a foot-long gray beard as he sat comfortably in a military courtroom and peppered the Marine colonel who serves as his judge with questions.
What, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed demanded to know, were Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann's religious affiliations? His views on torture?
For a while Tuesday, Mohammed turned the tables on his captors and made the military judge justify his competency to preside over the trial of five accused Sept. 11 plotters.
Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the suicide hijackings, spent more than an hour putting Kohlmann through his paces in the high-tech, high-security courtroom that the Pentagon built on the naval base here for the controversial war tribunals.
Glaring and poking an occasional finger in the air, Mohammed demanded that the judge explain his views on such hot-button issues as religion and torture. He was frequently unsatisfied, and hit Kohlmann with a barrage of follow-up questions and sarcastic political commentary before the judge threatened to revoke Mohammed's court authorization to act as his own lawyer in the case.
But before that, the former Al Qaeda operations chief, now paunchy, bespectacled and wearing flowing robes and a black turban, had the run of the courtroom. He was conducting the voir dire process that is designed to allow the defense to examine a judge's competence and impartiality. Lawyers for the other defendants quizzed the judge too. But even if they were to determine that the judge should be replaced, Kohlmann could overrule them. In that event, the defendants could appeal to a higher military court.
Throughout Mohammed's questioning, and during the rest of the day's marathon legal proceedings, he sat behind the first of five massive tables, one for each of the accused men's legal teams, his position befitting his status as the de facto courtroom leader and spokesman for the group. At one point he demanded that the judge explain how he could ensure a fair trial, both as a Christian and a member of a U.S. military that has declared war on Al Qaeda.
"The government considers all of us fanatical extremists," Mohammed said. "How can you, as an officer of the U.S. Marine Corps, stand over me in judgment?"
