Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
MiamiHerald.com
April 28, 2008 By Carol Rosenberg
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Ten weeks after the Pentagon prosecutor swore out preliminary death penalty charges, Navy defense lawyers have had first talks with the top three alleged 9/11 conspirators.
For each of the men, it was his first private meeting with an attorney offering help after years of secret CIA custody and interrogation, including the waterboarding of one of them.
And only one of the three has so far agreed to accept the free-of-charge services of a military lawyer.
He is Ali Abdal Aziz Ali, a Pakistani man and the nephew of reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- who allegedly sent about $120,000 to the hijackers to fund, among other things, flight training at U.S. flight schools.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer said Sunday that Ali, who speaks ''fluent'' English, agreed to let him defend him, along with two volunteer civilian lawyers from Seattle -- after two days of talks last week.
''He appears to be fine,'' Mizer said of this 30-something client.
Getting lawyers for the men has been a key hurdle in the Pentagon efforts to move forward on a complex conspiracy case of six men held here for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed 2,973 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.
Several alleged al Qaeda foot soldiers are boycotting their trials and have fired their lawyers, both military and civilian volunteers. Those men, however, face a maximum of life in prison if convicted, not death.
Charge sheets issued Feb. 11 propose the military execution of Ali and the five others, should they be convicted by a military commission.
No trial date has been set while a civilian Bush administration appointee named Susan Crawford decides whether and when to go forward with the 9/11 case.
While she looks at the charges, prison camp officials have been granting military defense lawyers restricted access to the accused -- imposing national security limits on them and taking custody of their notes while the Pentagon establishes Top Secret sites and clearances for defense teams.
Last week, Navy Reserves Capt. Prescott Prince, a defense counsel, introduced himself to Ali's uncle, who is known in the United States by his initials, KSM, and who allegedly ran the Sept. 11 plot for al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
Mohammed has yet to agree to the military defense counsel.
Prince is assembling a four-attorney defense team to fend off the capital charges against Mohammed, whom the CIA has admitted to waterboarding in secret detention.
Prince calls waterboarding ''torture'' -- and says his client should be tried in a civilian or military court, not by commissions, where each military judge gets to decide whether to let the jury of U.S. military officers hear evidence gleaned through torture.
Prince and Mohammed met on Thursday under strict security arrangements that mostly muzzle the Navy Reserves captain who has practiced private law in Virginia for decades.
In parallel, Navy Reserves Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier and Navy Lt. Ricardo Federico met with the 9/11 plot's alleged control officer, a Yemeni named Ramzi Bin al Shibh, and offered to defend him.
''He seems smart,'' Lachelier said of Bin al Shibh. ``I think he's checking us out. He's naturally very distrustful -- but very respectful.''
The three met for about five ''productive'' hours across two days, said Lachelier, who declared the talks ''favorable,'' although he did not yet agree to let them defend him.
They meet again in about two weeks.
Lachelier, a former San Diego federal public defender, said he did not seem averse to the idea of a woman lawyer leading his defense team. ''I didn't get any bad vibes in that regard,'' she said.
Bin al Shibh has been described as a KSM deputy who allegedly served as a key intermediary with some of the 9/11 suicide squads.
The American Civil Liberties Union has assigned Chicago lawyer Thomas A. Durkin to work with Lachelier. Durkin, a veteran civilian defense attorney, has defended alleged terrorists in federal courts where the government has invoked national secrets protections.
In announcing the arrival of the ''high-value detainees'' at Guantánamo in September 2006, President Bush defended rough interrogations as a war-on-terror necessity.
He said agents used an ''alternative set of procedures'' -- later identified by the CIA director, Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, to include waterboarding -- on terror suspect Abu Zubaydah, to hunt down Bin al Shibh.
Also Sunday, Mizer said he met with Aziz Ali across two days, during which the 30-something detainee agreed to accept Seattle attorneys Jeff Robinson and Amanda Lee on the defense team. The two were signed up through an American Civil Liberties Union project, which is helping fund the work of civilian lawyers defending death penalty candidates at the war court.
Mizer, who is defending bin Laden driver Salim Hamdan of Yemen in a non-capital case, said he is forbidden from discussing his latest client's case under military intelligence rules that sealed his notes of their meeting in the prison camp lawyer's safe.
He described representing both men -- in separate proceedings -- as ``a delicate juggling act.''
In the Hamdan case, for example, Mizer has sought the testimony of KSM and other former CIA detainees to clear the driver of terror charges -- by adopting a government theory that the former CIA detainees are senior al Qaeda members.
Hamdan, 36, has an extensive civilian legal team working with Mizer, including the former Navy lawyer who helped overturn President Bush's first format for military commissions by challenging the driver's first war crimes case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In contrast, Mizer is the only attorney so far to ever meet with Aziz Ali.
According to a Pentagon transcript, Aziz Ali told U.S. military officers a year ago that he neither knew of the 9/11 plot nor was a member of al Qaeda.
Asked about the cash transfers, he told the military panel that some wealthy Arab men living in the United States routinely sought funds for lavish lifestyles while studying abroad. He described one friend as an English language student who needed $100,000 cash in the United States -- to buy a Ferrari.
Two of the former CIA captives have yet to meet with their military defense counsel.
The sixth man accused in the conspiracy is Mohammed al Qahtani, a Saudi man in his 30s who has been held for years at Guantánamo and was subjected to a rough military interrogation regime approved by Donald Rumsfeld, unlike his alleged co-conspirators, who were held secretly by the CIA.
In the Qahtani case, according to a leaked log of his 50-day interrogation at Camp X-Ray here, U.S. interrogators in November and December of 2002 used sleep deprivation, left him strapped to an intravenous drip without bathroom breaks and had him strip naked to break his will.
They also told him to bark like a dog in a bid to get him to confess to being the so-called 20th Hijacker, the man who didn't get to the United States in time to join the 19 other terrorists in the 9/11 attack.
Qahtani has not yet met his military attorney, Army Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles. But his long-serving civilian attorney, Gitanjali Gutierrez of the New York Center for Constitutional Rights, said late Sunday that she has gotten Defense Department approval to defend him along with Broyles at the war court.
April 28, 2008 By Carol Rosenberg
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Ten weeks after the Pentagon prosecutor swore out preliminary death penalty charges, Navy defense lawyers have had first talks with the top three alleged 9/11 conspirators.
For each of the men, it was his first private meeting with an attorney offering help after years of secret CIA custody and interrogation, including the waterboarding of one of them.
And only one of the three has so far agreed to accept the free-of-charge services of a military lawyer.
He is Ali Abdal Aziz Ali, a Pakistani man and the nephew of reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- who allegedly sent about $120,000 to the hijackers to fund, among other things, flight training at U.S. flight schools.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer said Sunday that Ali, who speaks ''fluent'' English, agreed to let him defend him, along with two volunteer civilian lawyers from Seattle -- after two days of talks last week.
''He appears to be fine,'' Mizer said of this 30-something client.
Getting lawyers for the men has been a key hurdle in the Pentagon efforts to move forward on a complex conspiracy case of six men held here for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed 2,973 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.
Several alleged al Qaeda foot soldiers are boycotting their trials and have fired their lawyers, both military and civilian volunteers. Those men, however, face a maximum of life in prison if convicted, not death.
Charge sheets issued Feb. 11 propose the military execution of Ali and the five others, should they be convicted by a military commission.
No trial date has been set while a civilian Bush administration appointee named Susan Crawford decides whether and when to go forward with the 9/11 case.
While she looks at the charges, prison camp officials have been granting military defense lawyers restricted access to the accused -- imposing national security limits on them and taking custody of their notes while the Pentagon establishes Top Secret sites and clearances for defense teams.
Last week, Navy Reserves Capt. Prescott Prince, a defense counsel, introduced himself to Ali's uncle, who is known in the United States by his initials, KSM, and who allegedly ran the Sept. 11 plot for al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
Mohammed has yet to agree to the military defense counsel.
Prince is assembling a four-attorney defense team to fend off the capital charges against Mohammed, whom the CIA has admitted to waterboarding in secret detention.
Prince calls waterboarding ''torture'' -- and says his client should be tried in a civilian or military court, not by commissions, where each military judge gets to decide whether to let the jury of U.S. military officers hear evidence gleaned through torture.
Prince and Mohammed met on Thursday under strict security arrangements that mostly muzzle the Navy Reserves captain who has practiced private law in Virginia for decades.
In parallel, Navy Reserves Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier and Navy Lt. Ricardo Federico met with the 9/11 plot's alleged control officer, a Yemeni named Ramzi Bin al Shibh, and offered to defend him.
''He seems smart,'' Lachelier said of Bin al Shibh. ``I think he's checking us out. He's naturally very distrustful -- but very respectful.''
The three met for about five ''productive'' hours across two days, said Lachelier, who declared the talks ''favorable,'' although he did not yet agree to let them defend him.
They meet again in about two weeks.
Lachelier, a former San Diego federal public defender, said he did not seem averse to the idea of a woman lawyer leading his defense team. ''I didn't get any bad vibes in that regard,'' she said.
Bin al Shibh has been described as a KSM deputy who allegedly served as a key intermediary with some of the 9/11 suicide squads.
The American Civil Liberties Union has assigned Chicago lawyer Thomas A. Durkin to work with Lachelier. Durkin, a veteran civilian defense attorney, has defended alleged terrorists in federal courts where the government has invoked national secrets protections.
In announcing the arrival of the ''high-value detainees'' at Guantánamo in September 2006, President Bush defended rough interrogations as a war-on-terror necessity.
He said agents used an ''alternative set of procedures'' -- later identified by the CIA director, Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, to include waterboarding -- on terror suspect Abu Zubaydah, to hunt down Bin al Shibh.
Also Sunday, Mizer said he met with Aziz Ali across two days, during which the 30-something detainee agreed to accept Seattle attorneys Jeff Robinson and Amanda Lee on the defense team. The two were signed up through an American Civil Liberties Union project, which is helping fund the work of civilian lawyers defending death penalty candidates at the war court.
Mizer, who is defending bin Laden driver Salim Hamdan of Yemen in a non-capital case, said he is forbidden from discussing his latest client's case under military intelligence rules that sealed his notes of their meeting in the prison camp lawyer's safe.
He described representing both men -- in separate proceedings -- as ``a delicate juggling act.''
In the Hamdan case, for example, Mizer has sought the testimony of KSM and other former CIA detainees to clear the driver of terror charges -- by adopting a government theory that the former CIA detainees are senior al Qaeda members.
Hamdan, 36, has an extensive civilian legal team working with Mizer, including the former Navy lawyer who helped overturn President Bush's first format for military commissions by challenging the driver's first war crimes case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In contrast, Mizer is the only attorney so far to ever meet with Aziz Ali.
According to a Pentagon transcript, Aziz Ali told U.S. military officers a year ago that he neither knew of the 9/11 plot nor was a member of al Qaeda.
Asked about the cash transfers, he told the military panel that some wealthy Arab men living in the United States routinely sought funds for lavish lifestyles while studying abroad. He described one friend as an English language student who needed $100,000 cash in the United States -- to buy a Ferrari.
Two of the former CIA captives have yet to meet with their military defense counsel.
The sixth man accused in the conspiracy is Mohammed al Qahtani, a Saudi man in his 30s who has been held for years at Guantánamo and was subjected to a rough military interrogation regime approved by Donald Rumsfeld, unlike his alleged co-conspirators, who were held secretly by the CIA.
In the Qahtani case, according to a leaked log of his 50-day interrogation at Camp X-Ray here, U.S. interrogators in November and December of 2002 used sleep deprivation, left him strapped to an intravenous drip without bathroom breaks and had him strip naked to break his will.
They also told him to bark like a dog in a bid to get him to confess to being the so-called 20th Hijacker, the man who didn't get to the United States in time to join the 19 other terrorists in the 9/11 attack.
Qahtani has not yet met his military attorney, Army Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles. But his long-serving civilian attorney, Gitanjali Gutierrez of the New York Center for Constitutional Rights, said late Sunday that she has gotten Defense Department approval to defend him along with Broyles at the war court.