September 11 2001 Terrorist Attack

A military judge Wednesday strongly advised two accused co-conspirators in the Sept. 11 attacks not to represent themselves in their upcoming trial because their defense would suffer from several factors, including a lack of access to the classified evidence that the government plans to use against them. "It would be best for you to accept the assistance of counsel. If it sounds as if I am trying to talk you out of representing yourself, that would be accurate," Judge Ralph H.

Jurors hearing the first war crimes case against a Guantanamo prisoner watched a graphic 90-minute film chronicling the history of Al Qaeda on Monday, which included footage of mangled corpses in the rubble of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing in Kenya. The disturbing images, including some not previously released by U.S. authorities, were part of a film produced and narrated by a prosecution witness under contract with the tribunal hierarchy, the Office of Military Commissions.

The nearly 3,000 people who died when hijackers commandeered four passenger jets on Sept. 11, 2001, were remembered Thursday as President Bush dedicated the first national memorial to the victims and the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates came together in a moment of silence. In a ceremony at the Pentagon, where 184 people were killed, Bush recalled how the "doomed airliner plunged from the sky, split the rock and steel of this building and changed our world forever."

A military judge Monday enlisted the help of self-described Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in coaxing a man accused as a co-conspirator out of his detention cell here so the controversial trial into the attacks on New York and Washington can proceed. After a long day of procedural wrangling, Marine Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann ordered Ramzi Binalshibh to be "extracted" from his cell by force if necessary and brought into the military commission courtroom at the U.S.

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.

The museum planned for ground zero should include a memorial to workers who died after becoming ill during cleanup of World Trade Center debris, two state lawmakers said, adding they would introduce state legislation to ensure those workers are recognized. "We want to tell the story of the 9/11 workers who rushed here to help put the city back on its feet, who got sick because they did that, and now unfortunately many of them have died," said Assemblyman Michael Gianaris.

The search for remains of Sept. 11 victims has moved across the street from the former World Trade Center to the lot of a destroyed church, where important relics, including the bones of three saints, may also be buried. Since October, more than 400 bones have been unearthed from the debris of a service road that construction trucks used to get in and out of the site after the 2001 attacks.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the Kuwaiti national who is thought to be the highest-ranking Al Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, told a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last weekend that he was responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to a transcript of the hearing.

The most revealing aspect of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's testimony before a military tribunal may not have been the details about the many Al Qaeda plots he claims to have orchestrated but the insight it offered into the suspected Sept. 11 mastermind. In an hourlong written and oral presentation to his military captors Saturday, Mohammed showed himself to be ambitious, boastful and, when given the chance, talkative. He was even thoughtful about his cause and his craft.

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Wednesday urged a Senate panel to reopen the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund for sick ground zero responders and said the city needed $150 million each year to continue to treat them. Thousands of the 50,000 rescue and recovery workers are being monitored and treated for serious respiratory illnesses at special clinics in New York City, Long Island and New Jersey.