Free Republic

Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission, CBS News has learned. A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Trying Mohammed in a civilian court and closing the Guantanamo prison were once some of the Obama administration's top priorities, but political realities have hamstrung both goals. Holder previously recommended that Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 plotters be tried in New York City...

WASHINGTON – Responding to Justice Department memos declassified by the Obama administration last week, former Bush administration officials claim that CIA agents who repeatedly waterboarded Sept. 11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were not bent on torture but simply treating a raging case of head lice and dandruff. Fecal Harpy, a spokeswoman for former Vice President Dick Cheney, said Obama’s decision to release the memos had forced Cheney and other members of the Bush administration to counter with their own disclosures of sensitive information. Cheney was a tireless advocate of waterboarding in the aftermath of 9-11. “We hate to do this,...

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is leaning toward trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in a military tribunal, reversing a Justice Department pledge to put them before a civilian court. Administration officials said moves by Congress as well as by local and state governments are all but foreclosing the civilian-court option. Members of Congress have moved to cut off funds for a civilian trial, while local governments have expressed reluctance to play host to such a trial.

Top advisers to President Obama are close to a decision recommending that the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks be prosecuted in a military tribunal, The Washington Post reported Friday, citing unnamed administration officials. According to the report, the president's advisors have grown increasingly wary of bipartisan opposition to the planned civilian federal trial in New York City, mere blocks from where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in the spectacular attack on the World Trade Center. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and prominent state Democrats, who initially embraced Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheikh...

U.S. May Abandon Civilian Trial For 9/11 Suspect Attorney general hints Mohammed may be tried before military commission WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder is leaving open the possibility of trying professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military commission instead of the civilian trial originally planned for New York City. "At the end of the day, wherever this case is tried, in whatever forum, what we have to ensure is that it's done as transparently as possible and with adherence to all the rules," Holder told The Washington Post in an interview published in Friday's editions. "If...

The feds may still try the 9/11 terror thugs near Ground Zero, President Obama said yesterday, shocking critics. "I have not ruled it out, but I think it's important for us to take into account the practical, logistical issues involved," Obama told CBS News anchor Katie Couric. "I mean, if you have a city that is saying no, and a police department that is saying no, and a mayor that is saying no, that makes it difficult," Obama acknowledged. The White House asked Attorney General Eric Holder late last month to look for alternatives to a trial in Manhattan Federal...

This fiasco disgusts Americans. A February 1 Rasmussen survey discovered that only 16 percent of likely voters want terrorists to enjoy the same legal rights as U.S. citizens, while 74 percent disagree. Meanwhile, HumanEvents.com (which often posts my columns) has gathered 126,665 signatures on its online petition demanding KSM and company’s ejection from civilian court. “These proceedings will make the O. J. Simpson trial look like a traffic-court hearing,” says Marc Thiessen, author of Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack , a new bestseller on the Obama administration’s soft-on-terror...

Accused Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried and convicted and is likely to be executed, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Sunday. Interviewed on CNN's "State of the Union," show, Gibbs said: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to meet justice and he's going to meet his maker. He will be brought to justice and he's likely to be executed for the heinous crimes he committed." Gibbs did not confirm reports that the Obama administration has begun looking for places other than the heart of New York City to prosecute self-professed mastermind Mohammed and four accused co-conspirators...

The Obama administration has abandoned its plan to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, on trial in Lower Manhattan, according to administration officials. The reversal marks the latest setback for an administration that has been buffeted at every turn as it seeks to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And without the backdrop of Ground Zero for a trial, the administration will also lose some of the rich symbolism associated with its attempt to forge a new approach to handling high-value al-Qaeda detainees. "New York is out," said an administration...

A group of eight New York lawmakers have written to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder expressing concern about plans to prosecute the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks in Manhattan, AFP reported Thursday. The members of the House of Representatives and state officials, said they agreed with President Barack Obama's decision to prosecute five men accused of the attacks before a civilian court. But they warned that the courthouse selected for the trial, just steps from the site of the World Trade Centers among the attack's targets, was poorly chosen.

The White House ordered the Justice Department Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan. The dramatic turnabout came hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would "prefer that they did it elsewhere" and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder. "It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that's too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood," Bloomberg told reporters.

Senior administration officials confirm alternate trial locations are being sought because Congress is almost sure to deny President Obama the funds necessary to proceed with its original planBowing to intense and deepening bipartisan opposition to conducting the criminal trials for the 9/11 hijackers in the heart of New York City, the Obama White House has begun discussing alternate locations with the Justice Department, senior administration officials told Fox News. The White House denied a New York Daily News report that it ordering the Department of Justice to find a new location for the trials, which are sure to attract massive...

White House officials have told the Justice Department to consider other venues for the 9/11 terror trial that was to be held in lower Manhattan, the Daily News has learned. The decision came after Mayor Bloomberg and other politicians across the state railed against President Obama's plan to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Manhattan Federal Court.... It was not immediately clear if the reassessment means the trial will definitely be moved out of the city.

When Osama bin Laden decided to marry for the fifth time, he turned to his most trusted advisers to find him a bride. He wanted a Yemeni girl, he told them. The marriage would cement his relationship with Yemen, his billionaire father’s home. Sheikh Rashad Ismael, a Yemeni aide, took up the challenge. “She had to be religious, obedient, generous, well brought-up, quiet, calm and young enough not to feel jealous of the sheikh’s (bin Laden’s) other wives,” he giggled. “Multiple wives tend to vie for attention out of jealousy and end up in catfights, and bin Laden did not...

New York City's Police Commissioner Ray Kelly addressed the New York Young Republican Club on Thursday. Two hundred and fifty members of the organization were in attendance and mainly peppered the commissioner with questions regarding the upcoming 9/11 terror trials that are to be staged in lower Manhattan. When asked how the decision for the trials to be hosted in New York came about, Commisioner Kelly's response produced gasps among audience members (h/t Loud Citizen).: “We were not consulted,” Kelly said tersely of the decision. He stated that the trial “will raise the threat level of this city,” a threat...

A blog piece I wrote yesterday on the KSM terror trial, reporting on remarks made by NYPD’s Ray Kelly, has been climbing up the blogosphere today. First I posted it at my site, LoudCitizen.org. Then I cross-posted it to FR and UrbanElephants. Next, The Washington Times quoted an entire paragraph of the piece, giving me a “hat tip” and linking directly to my blog. Their blogger Kerry Picket was tipped off by a friend of mine. From there, I managed one rung up the ladder when Josh Goldberg made it a “Must Read” at Lucianne.com this afternoon. Based on that...

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly addressed the New York Young Republican Club on Thursday. 250 members of the organization were in attendance and mainly peppered the commissioner with questions regarding the upcoming 9/11 terror trials that are to be staged in lower Manhattan. When asked how the decision for the trials to be hosted in New York came about, Commisioner Kelly's response produced gasps among audience members (h/t Loud Citizen).:

Reporting from Washington - After Zacarias Moussaoui -- the accused "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks -- was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 because one juror in Virginia refused to agree to the death penalty, Moussaoui clapped his hands and called out, "America, you lost and I won." Now the Obama administration plans to seek a death sentence for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind. Some legal experts say President Obama was overly confident when he predicted that critics of trying Mohammed in a federal courtroom in Manhattan would be silenced "when the death penalty...

Will Barack Hussein Obama become just another name in the long list of defamed, failed, and corrupt Illinois politicians? Will he follow in Governor Blagojevich’s footsteps as another Democrat whose party abandoned him? Has his fall from political grace begun? In the short span of time this administration has provoked far more questions, than it claimed to have answers to. In a rare flash of rationality, Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball had some questions of his own: “President Obama has his chin out on about every hot issue out there, health care, terror trials, job losses, even the breast...

Scott Fenstermaker, an attorney for terrorists at Gitmo, is on Bill O'Reilly now and is repeatedly refusing to answer the question, "Were the people killed on 911 murdered?" He just kept answering that the jury will decide that. He is also saying the trial will be filled with "US propaganda." No link, it's on O'Reilly.

Germans don't want KSM or the other turds to die.

President Obama has said it was Attorney General Eric Holder who decided to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind, and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees in civilian federal court in New York City. Yet, as a matter of law, that can't be true. "You know, I said to the attorney general, 'make a decision based on the law,' " the president told CNN. In Holder's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he confirmed that Obama had left it up to him: "This was a tough call, and reasonable people can disagree with my conclusion that these individuals should...

Here are a few facts we can’t overlook. *A retired Army lawyer speaking at a TEA Party rally this past week explained the dangers this trail poses to national security. He predicted a “civilian” trial will lead to the exposure of some of America’s most important military secrets and methods of keeping us safe since 9-11. During the trial of John Walker Lindh he was in charge of a team of military lawyers whose only job was defeating ACLU filings designed to expose America’s secrets. He confidently predicted this would happen again during this trial, but sadly concluded the military’s...

-- For a moment, he became judge, jury and executioner. President Obama yesterday blurted out a predicted conviction and death sentence for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- then sheepishly qualified the prejudgment. In one of several TV interviews at the end of his Asia trip, Obama said those offended by the legal privileges offered to Mohammed in a civilian rather than military trial won't find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him." And then he quickly backtracked, saying he didn't mean to suggest he was prejudging the self-confessed mass murderer....

Last January, several Republican legal stars wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting Eric Holder's nomination to be attorney general. Now, in light of Holder's decision to grant 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed full American constitutional rights and try him in federal court in New York, some of those veteran lawyers are having second thoughts. The January letter called Holder an "extraordinary lawyer" of "unfailing integrity" who is "superbly qualified" to lead the Justice Department and whose appointment as the first African-American attorney general "should be hailed as a milestone." "From his experience Eric fully understands and appreciates...

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a federal civilian court is inconsistent, indefensible and inexplicable. It is inconsistent with Holder's own decision to try Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in a military commission. It is indefensible in light of the unmistakable intentions of the Framers of the Constitution. It is inexplicable by any prudential analysis of the national interest in dealing with an enemy like al-Qaida. Some strange ideological impulse -- rather than common sense and respect for the rule of law -- is driving the Obama administration to give special treatment to the perpetrator of one...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama predicted that professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be convicted and executed as Attorney General Eric Holder proclaimed: "Failure is not an option." Even if a terror trial suspect were acquitted, Holder said, he would not be released in the United States. In one of a series of TV interviews during his trip to Asia, Obama said those offended by the legal privileges given to Mohammed by virtue of getting a civilian trial rather than a military tribunal won't find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty...

While it is widely assumed that any jury in New York would find the 9/11 terrorists guilty, especially given their previous confessions, it's within the realm of probability that a Muslim juror would vote to acquit based upon his/her loyalty to (or fear of) Islam.

the White House made up its mind about this six months ago--that would be in May, roughly four months after President Obama's inauguration....why did it wait until last week to make the announcement? That it was the week after an election is bound to raise suspicions that the timing was politically motivated.

Gov. David Paterson openly criticized the White House on Monday, saying he thought it was a terrible idea to move alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists to New York for trial.

WASH­ING­TON — Not long after he was roust­ed from bed and seized in a predawn raid in Pak­is­tan in March 2003, Khalid Shaikh Mo­hammed gave his cap­tors two de­mands: He want­ed a lawyer, and he want­ed to be taken to New York. After a near­ly sev­en-year odyssey that took him to se­cret Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agen­cy jails in Eu­rope and an Amer­i­can mil­i­tary prison in Cuba, Mr. Mo­hammed is fi­nal­ly like­ly to get his wish. He will be the most se­nior lead­er of Al Qaeda to date held to ac­count for the mass mur­der of near­ly 3,000 Amer­i­cans, fac­ing trial in...

<p>Outraged New Yorkers said yesterday that admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other terrorists deserve to be put to death -- and some even volunteered for the job.</p> <p>"Kill them without a trial. Just a bullet in the head and say goodbye. Why waste taxpayer money?" said Thomas Pland, 70, a truck driver from Astoria, Queens.</p>

Family members of some of the victims of the 9/11 attacks are voicing outrage over the decision to take the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks to New York and try him in a federal civilian court. Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be tried in a courthouse just blocks from where the World Trade Center stood. The widow of a pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, Debra Burlingame, says, "We have a president who doesn't know we're at war."

Source: 9/11 Terror Detainees Face Trial in N.Y. Friday, November 13, 2009 WASHINGTON — Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday. The official said Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning. The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday.

WASHINGTON -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and four others accused in the attacks will be put on criminal trial in New York, Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce later Friday. The decision, described by people familiar with the matter, is part of wider announcement planned on how to bring to justice detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison. It's the first set of decisions before a Monday deadline on how to deal with the more than 200 prisoners remaining at the facility, which President Barack Obama has ordered closed.

No Constitutional Rights For Red-Blooded Americans bythelastcrusade.org Welcome to the Islamic America of Barack Hussein Obama,Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees have been granted full rights and protection under the U.S. Constitution.They will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official announced today.Under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Mr. Mohammed and the other “alleged” terrorists will have the right to a speedy trial, the right to publicly paid counsel, the right to immediate access to all government evidence - - including...

The accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks and four other suspects will be sent to New York and prosecuted in a court near where the World Trade Center once stood, the U.S. government said Friday, as it took a step toward closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others had been facing trials in military commissions at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, but U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to move some cases to U.S. criminal courts and close the prison by mid-January. Obama's decision to close Guantanamo, a symbol for critics abroad of...

Byron York at the Washington Examiner has Senator James Webb’s repudiation of the Obama administration decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 figures in a New York City courtroom (emphasis mine): I have never disputed the constitutional authority of the President to convene Article III courts in cases of international terrorism. However, I remain very concerned about the wisdom of doing so. Those who have committed acts of international terrorism are enemy combatants, just as certainly as the Japanese pilots who killed thousands of Americans at Pearl Harbor. It will be disruptive, costly, and potentially counterproductive to...

Sen. John McCain hammered the Obama administration Friday for its decision to try accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists in a civilian court in New York. Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi will all be transferred from Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York - a short distance from the World Trade Center towers that were destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

Should any Jury even allow this to come to a civilian trial?

House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio) says the Obama administration is putting "liberal special interests before the safety and security of the American people" in deciding to bring the 9/11 mastermind to the United States for trial in federal civilian court. Boehner issued the statement on Friday, shortly before Attorney General Eric Holder formally announced the decision to bring Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees to New York City. “The possibility that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators could be found ‘not guilty’ due to some legal technicality just blocks from Ground Zero should give every American...

It could jeopardize counterterror programs and thereby endanger Americans, but who cares? "9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to go on trial in New York," from the Telegraph, November 13 (thanks to Anne Crockett): President Barack Obama said the September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be put on trial in New York City. Speaking in Tokyo, Mr Obama said Mohammed, the self-proclaimed organiser of the al-Qaeda terrorist plot that killed almost 3,000 people in 2001, would face "exacting" US justice. Bringing such notorious suspects to US soil to face trial would be a key...

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confessed at a Guantanamo Bay military hearing that he planned and funded that al-Qaeda operation and said he was involved in more than two dozen other terrorist acts around the world, according to documents released by the Pentagon yesterday. In a rambling statement delivered Saturday to a closed-door military tribunal, Mohammed declared himself an enemy of the United States and claimed some responsibility for many of the major terrorist attacks on U.S. and allied targets over more than a decade. He said that he is at war with...

Accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official told The Associated Press on Friday. The official said that Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to announce the decision later Friday morning. The official was not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement and was speaking on condition of anonymity.

Next Attack Nuclear!!! FBI Informant Spills Guts ByPaul L. Williams, Ph.D.thelastcrusade.org On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, an FBI informant who infiltrated U.S. terrorist cells, says the FBI missed a chance to stop the al Qaeda plot because they focused more on undercover stings than on the man who would later become known as 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and Adnan el Shukrujumah, one of Atta’s key associates.Former undercover operative Elie Assaad, a 36-year-old Catholic native of Lebanon who pretended to be a Muslim extemist, says he spotted and became suspicious of Atta and Shukrujumah in early 2001, when he...

SNIP Al Qaeda thug Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and former No. 2 henchman of Osama bin Laden, looks oddly like his monstrous mentor after six years of captivity. SNIP But, KSM, as he's known in intelligence circles, doesn't look any worse for wear in photographs taken in July during a visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Guantanamo Bay. A healthy-looking Mohammed has grown a long bin Laden-like beard, while sporting a red-checkered turban. The last the world saw of him six years ago, he was disheveled, paunchy, in a stretched T-shirt...

The first photographs of the self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind at Guantanamo Bay have cropped up on the Internet, and experts say the images of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are being used by terrorist groups to inspire attacks against the United States. The photographs, taken in July by the Red Cross at the Guantanamo detention centre in Cuba, show Mohammed in a white robe, a red-patterned headdress and a long salt-and-pepper beard. They are the first known images of Mohammed since shot taken upon his capture in Pakistan in March 2003 showing him in a white T-shirt, with disheveled hair and a moustache....

KSM being the trendsetter in the jihadi-fashion world

After enduring the CIA's harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency's secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called "terrorist tutorials." In 2005 and 2006, the bearded, pudgy man who calls himself the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks discussed a wide variety of subjects, including Greek philosophy and al-Qaeda dogma. In one instance, he scolded a listener for poor note-taking and his inability to recall details of an earlier lecture.