Idaho Attorneys To Assist Al Qaeda Kingpin

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
MiamiHerald.com
April 14, 2008 By Carol Rosenberg
WASHINGTON -- The Navy officer assigned to defend reputed al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed said Monday he is assembling a four-attorney team to stave off the alleged 9/11 mastermind's death-penalty charges -- two military JAG officers and two lawyers from Boise, Idaho, who have defended an alleged terrorist before.
Navy Capt. Prescott ''Scott'' Prince was detailed to the case last week. He has yet to see Mohammed, a U.S.-educated Pakistani citizen known in intelligence circles as ``KSM.''
On Feb. 11, the Pentagon prosecutor identified Mohammed as the lead defendant in a proposed prosecution to try six detainees at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on capital murder conspiracy charges in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Prince said Boise law partners David Z. Nevin and Scott McKay have agreed to work as volunteer civilian defense counsel under a program sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
In 2004, McKay and Nevin secured a federal court acquittal for a Saudi man, Sami al-Hussayen, 34, who was a doctoral candidate at the University of Idaho.
In U.S. anti-terror sweeps following the 9/11 attacks, Hussayen was accused of ''providing material support for terror,'' for allegedly serving as webmaster for a Muslim charity that the U.S. government called an al Qaeda front. He was cleared of all charges and returned to his native Saudi Arabia.
No stranger to unpopular cases, Nevin also won an acquittal for Kevin Harris, a friend of Randy Weaver's, accused of killing a U.S. marshall in the 1993 Ruby Ridge case.
In addition, the Pentagon's chief defense counsel for military commissions, Army Reserves Col. Steve David, was in the process of assigning another U.S. military lawyer or JAG, short for judge advocate general, to the KSM case.
Prince said in an interview that he would also add a paralegal, a translator and intelligence analyst to his team. Additionally, he was seeking Pentagon approval for a so-called ''mitigation expert'' on the case.
Prince said he anticipated ''a very complex documentary case,'' with lots of evidence to sift through in light of U.S. government disclosures that Mohammed had been held four years incommunicado, never seen a lawyer and was subjected to White House approved ``enhanced interrogation techniques.''
The CIA has confirmed that Mohammed was among three war-on-terror captives who was waterboarded in U.S. custody, a simulated drowning technique that Prince flatly labeled ``torture.''
Ultimately, under military commissions rules, it will be up to Mohammed to decide whether he will accept any of the attorneys.
In recent, non-capital cases brought before to the military commissions, three alleged al Qaeda foot soldiers have fired their Pentagon-paid defense lawyers, and said they would boycott their trials.
In those cases, conviction carries life in prison. Acquittal likewise means likely continued detention as the U.S. government argues that ''enemy combatants'' can be held at Guantánamo until the end of hostilities in the global war on terror.
In capital cases, conviction could carry execution although no system for carrying out the death penalty has been established at Guantánamo.
Prince said he hoped to introduce himself to Mohammed in coming weeks, after getting special security clearances governing former CIA held detainees at the remote U.S. Navy base.
Nevin and McKay need the same clearances and would meet him later, if Mohammed agrees to their volunteering to work on the case. It is believed that neither have ever visited the offshore detention center.
Both men declined through an assistant to comment on Monday.
An ACLU news release had earlier listed Nevin and McKay among leading national criminal defense lawyers whom the civil liberties group had enlisted for a nascent Guantánamo death-penalty defense program, to be called The John Adams project.
 
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