Ammar al-Baluchi | Ammar al-Baluchi | al-Qaeda | India-Pakistan | 20030502 |
Home Front: WoT |
'They don't want closure, they want justice!' Fury from 9/11 families as it's revealed five Guantanamo Bay prisoners accused of planning terror attack are negotiating for PLEA DEALS that would take death penalty off table |
2022-09-12 |
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ammar al-Baluchi were all expected to face the death penalty if convicted. Related: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: 2022-03-16 Pentagon prosecutors working on deal to SAVE 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his accomplices from death penalty before his Guantanamo Bay trial Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: 2013-02-17 After 15 years in solitary, convicted terrorist pleads for contact with others Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: 2012-05-02 9/11 Mastermind Says He Wants to Die |
Link |
Home Front: WoT | ||||||
Death penalty trial date for men accused of planning 9/11 is finally set | ||||||
2019-09-01 | ||||||
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
| ||||||
Link |
Home Front: WoT | |
Sept 11 case at Guantanamo hits yet another snag | |
2016-04-07 | |
A two-week pretrial hearing scheduled to start Tuesday was abruptly canceled late last week by the military judge presiding over the case after he received a confidential notice from Justice Department lawyers. The document is sealed, its contents not even disclosed to prosecutors or the defense. But there are indications the filing has raised issues that will result in further delays in a case that has been mired in the pretrial stage for years. "I suspect we are back in this limbo stage and it will take some time to get out," said Jim Harrington, a lawyer for Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the five men facing a tribunal known as a military commission for his alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacking plot. From what little information can be gleaned from the judge's brief cancellation order, the new issue appears to be at least tangentially related to an FBI investigation of a possible security breach involving members of the Binalshibh defense team. The investigation was closed without criminal charges and the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, ultimately decided that it did not create a conflict of interest that required Harrington to step down. Pohl had directed a special review team of Justice Department lawyers to look into the FBI investigation and any potential conflict. He also told them to notify him of any new investigations. That may have happened Friday, when the judge received the notice that prompted him to cancel the session. "My best guess, and this is purely speculation, is that there is some new investigation that the special review team is advising the commission of," said James Connell, a lawyer for defendant Ammar al-Baluchi. A Justice Department front man declined comment Tuesday. The revelation of the FBI investigation in April 2014 stalled proceedings in the case for 18 months. Though the judge ruled there was no conflict, Harrington said he is still receiving court-ordered information into what he called a "gross violation of the attorney-client privilege" and there may be future revelations that the judge will have to address. The five defendants, including self-proclaimed criminal mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, face charges that include terrorism and nearly 3,000 counts of murder. They could get the death penalty if convicted. All five men were held in secret CIA prisons for interrogation before they were brought to Guantanamo in September 2006 for military prosecution. The case has been dogged ever since by legal and political issues as well as the logistics of trying a case at the isolated base in southeastern Cuba. They were arraigned for a second time in May 2012 and more than a dozen pretrial hearings have been held since. The chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, is legally barred from any involvement with the work of the special review team and did not predict when the proceedings would resume in a statement on the cancellation of the hearing. He said prosecutors are still working seven days a week to compile classified evidence for the defense by a Sept. 30 deadline. "We pledge to the families of the 9/11 fallen that the United States will not rest until justice is fully achieved," Martins said. The next hearing is to start May 30 but the judge said in his order that "further adjusting the schedule" may be necessary. | |
Link |
Home Front: WoT |
US Charges 9/11 Mastermind And Four Others |
2012-04-05 |
[AFP] - The United States charged the self-proclaimed criminal mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with four alleged plotters on Wednesday, vowing to seek the death penalty in a much-awaited military trial. "The charges allege that the five accused are responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York and Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pa., resulting in the killing of 2,976 people," the Defense Department said in a statement. "The convening authority referred the case to a capital military commission, meaning that, if convicted, the five accused could be sentenced to death." KSM, along with Walid bin Attash of Soddy Arabia, Yemen's Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Pakistain's Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali -- also known as Ammar al-Baluchi -- and Mustafa al-Hawsawi of Soddy Arabia will appear in court for arraignment proceedings within 30 days. The trial, which could be months away, will be held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the US government has set up military commissions to try terror suspects. |
Link |
Home Front: WoT | ||
9/11 Mastermind Set To Face US Military Court | ||
2012-03-12 | ||
WASHINGTON: Nine years after his arrest in Pakistain, self-proclaimed 9/11 criminal mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed could soon be back in court for the much-awaited "trial of the century." So much for the "right to a speedy" trial. 'Course, if the concept of "justice" came into it he'd have been pushing up daisies within a month of going into our custody. After years of delays, a significant step took place last week when a former aide to Mohammed, Majid Khan, accepted a plea deal with US authorities that will require him to testify against other terror suspects at a tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. More than a decade after the 2001 attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead on US soil, the 46-year-old bully boy known simply as "KSM" remains the ultimate figurehead in a legal battle fought by two successive US administrations. President Barack Obama Why can't I just eat my waffle?... "can claim credit for killing (Osama) bin Laden and (al-Qaeda holy man Anwar) Al-Awlaqi, so nailing KSM would complete the hat trick and help quiet the conservative fearmongers who say he's weak on terrorism," former chief US military prosecutor Colonel Morris Davis told AFP. Victory in the trial could prove critical to Obama this year in his re-election bid, where he faces Republicans critical of his approach to terrorism. The Democratic president had sought to hold a trial for KSM and his four accused accomplices in New York, just steps from the Ground Zero site where the World Trade Center's twin towers fell. But congressional Republicans put an end to those plans by blocking the transfer of terrorism suspects to the United States.
KSM, along with Walid bin Attash of Soddy Arabia, Yemen's Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Pakistain's Ammar al-Baluchi or Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Mustafa al-Hawsawi of Soddy Arabia, all face possible death penalties. The 88-page indictment lists 2,976 murder counts for each of the victims of the coordinated attacks. "Let's get rid of the alleged. KSM has admitted (the crimes) many times," said Michael Mukasey, who served as US attorney general under Bush. KSM's first confessions were made when he was subjected 183 times to a simulated drowning method known as waterboarding and other so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques at a secret CIA prison after his March 2003 capture. But "no statement obtained as a result of coercion can be used" in a military commissions trial, chief prosecutor Brigadier General Mark Martins said in an interview.
This is where Khan's awaited testimony fills the gap. The Pak national, who lived legally in America and graduated from a US high school, pleaded guilty at Guantanamo to a reduced charge of "conspiracy" to commit terrorism in exchange for a lighter sentence. "If Khan provides information on KSM and others, as has been suggested was part of the deal, it will no doubt speed up the prosecutions," said Karen Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham Law School. With Khan's testimony in hand, KSM can be officially tried before a Guantanamo judge, which observers say could take place at any time. The person who presides over the commissions, a judge known as the convening authority, now has "everything he needs to make the decision but he's not under a timeline," Martins said. Baluchi has requested that he be spared the death penalty, saying he played a lesser role in the attacks. But, following a vote in Congress, if the Guantanamo Five plead guilty, "they're allowed to be executed," said Adam Thurschwell, a general counsel in charge of defending Guantanamo detainees. Baluchi's lawyer, James Connell, said it is the convening authority's choice to decide a date for the trial. "We don't want them to rush into a decision but on the other hand, we don't want them to drag their feet," he added. Although the defendants might make pre-trial appearances soon, the crucial trial could be months away. "KSM wanted to use the rest of the trial as an opportunity to deliver a diatribe against US policy," said appellate attorney David Rivkin. KSM himself has declared that he wants to die and become a martyr. | ||
Link |
Terror Networks |
Gitmo Files: Dossier Shows Push for More Terror Attacks After 9/11 |
2011-04-26 |
He peers out from the photo in the classified file through heavy-framed spectacles, an owlish face with a graying beard and a half-smile. Saifullah Paracha, a successful businessman and for years a New York travel agent, appears to be the oldest of the 172 prisoners still held at the Guantánamo Bay prison. His dossier is among the most chilling. In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Paracha, 63, was one of a small circle of Al Qaeda operatives who explored ways to follow up on the hijackings with new attacks, according to the classified Guantánamo files made available to The New York Times. Working with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 planner who in early 2002 gave him $500,000 to $600,000 for safekeeping, Mr. Paracha offered his long experience in the shipping business for a scheme to move plastic explosives into the United States inside containers of womens and childrens clothing, the files assert. Detainee desired to help Al Qaeda do something big against the U.S., one of his co-conspirators, Ammar al-Baluchi, told Guantánamo interrogators, the files say. Mr. Paracha discussed obtaining biological or nuclear weapons as well, though he was concerned that detectors at ports would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the country, the file says. Mr. Parachas assessment is among more than 700 classified documents that fill in new details of Al Qaedas efforts to make 9/11 just the first in a series of attacks to cripple the United States, intentions thwarted as the Central Intelligence Agency captured Mr. Mohammed and other leaders of the terrorist network. |
Link |
Home Front: WoT | ||
9/11 suspects are meeting to lay out strategy for NY trial | ||
2009-12-25 | ||
While the five men wanted to plead guilty in a military commission earlier this year to hasten their executions, sources now say that the detainees favor participating in a full-scale federal trial to air their grievances and expose their treatment while held by the CIA at secret prisons. The sources, who cautioned that the detainees' final decision remains uncertain, spoke on the condition of anonymity because all communications with high-value detainees are presumptively classified.
The five accused have held two all-day meetings at Guantanamo Bay since Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said they would face federal criminal prosecution, according to Joseph DellaVedova, a spokesman for the Office of Military Commissions. DellaVedova said they break only for meals and prayers during the get-togethers. The military has also provided the men with computers in their cells at Guantanamo Bay to work on their defense. It is unclear when the men will be transferred to New York. The Obama administration has yet to file a 45-day classified notice with Congress that it intends to move the prisoners into the United States, according to Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. That suggests that their initial appearance in court in Manhattan will not come before February; the trial isn't expected to begin until late 2011. A federal grand jury in New York is hearing evidence and testimony, according to a report by NBCNewYork.com, the Web site of a local station. Both the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan declined to comment on the report. Courtroom as pulpit? In hearings at Guantanamo Bay, the five detainees have trumpeted their role in the 9/11 attacks and broadcast their fealty to Osama bin Laden, causing some consternation among observers that the men will use their federal trial as a pulpit of sorts. Federal officials, though, say they are confident that some of the rhetorical flourishes that Mohammed, in particular, offered at Guantanamo Bay will be kept firmly in check in U.S. District Court. "Judges in federal court have firm control over the conduct of defendants and other participants in their courtrooms, and when the 9/11 conspirators are brought to trial, I have every confidence that the presiding judge will ensure appropriate decorum," Holder said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month. Facing trial with Mohammed are four other alleged key players in the Sept. 11 conspiracy: Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni; Walid bin Attash, a Yemeni better known as Khallad; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Mohammed's nephew and a Pakistani also known as Ammar al-Baluchi; and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a Saudi. Among other issues being raised at Guantanamo, Mohammed and the others are discussing defense counsel, sources said. At the military tribunal, Mohammed, bin Attash and Ali represented themselves with assistance from both civilian and military lawyers. Lawyers for both Binalshibh and Hawsawi, however, had challenged the mental competence of their clients to represent themselves, and the issue had not been resolved when the Obama administration suspended proceedings at Guantanamo Bay. The lawyer question The issue of self-representation will have to be taken up again in federal court for all five defendants. In New York, lawyers for defendants in death cases are usually drawn from a "capital panel," a short list of attorneys with experience in death penalty cases. Attorneys will also need security clearances to handle classified evidence that is off limits to the defendants. The American Civil Liberties Union plans to ask the court to consider allowing some civilian lawyers from outside New York who worked at Guantanamo Bay to continue in the case. Mohammed's civilian attorneys at Guantanamo, for example, are from Idaho. They declined to comment on the issue of representation in federal court. The sources said the five have not yet established a common position on the role of defense counsel. But, the sources said, the five are beginning to understand the harsh conditions they will face in Manhattan and that meetings with lawyers will be their only human contact apart from any interaction with their jailers. The strategy meetings in Guantanamo will almost certainly end. Federal authorities are likely to impose "special administrative measures" on the defendants, according to Boyd. Apart from measures already in place at Guantanamo Bay -- including bans on social visits, phone calls and access to the media -- special measures can limit access to other inmates, a privilege currently enjoyed in Cuba by high-value detainees such as the 9/11 defendants. The attorney general can order the Bureau of Prisons to impose such conditions to protect national security and prevent the leak of classified information, according to federal guidelines. At Guantanamo Bay, Mohammed and 15 other high-value detainees held at the top-secret Camp 7 can share recreation time with another detainee; visit a media room with movies, newspapers and electronic games; or work out in a gym, according to a Pentagon study, which recommended even more communal activities. Mohammed and the others have been told by military defense lawyers that once in New York, they will be in a sparse 23-hour-a-day lockdown with one hour of individual recreation, according to the sources. "They are quite anxious about the new system and the new living conditions," one of the sources said. "They've been treated like rock stars compared to other detainees at Gitmo. And they know that all of that is about to change." | ||
Link |
Home Front: WoT | |
Amid Death-Penalty Doubts, 9/11 Suspects Withdraw Offer to Confess | |
2008-12-10 | |
Five of the men accused of planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said Monday that they wanted to plead guilty to murder and war crimes but withdrew the offer when a military judge raised questions about whether it would prevent them from fulfilling their desire to receive the death penalty. "Are you saying if we plead guilty we will not be able to be sentenced to death?" Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed operational mastermind of the attacks, asked at a pretrial hearing here. The seesaw proceedings Monday raised and then postponed the prospect of a conviction in a case that has become the centerpiece of the system of military justice created by the Bush administration. A conviction would have capped a seven-year quest for justice after the 2001 attacks, but the delay in entering pleas will probably extend the process beyond the end of the Bush presidency. The willingness of the defendants to "announce our confessions and plea in full," according to a document they sent to the judge in the case, Army Col. Stephen Henley, potentially bestows some hard decisions on the incoming administration. President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, but he has not indicated whether he will retain the military commissions that may be close to securing the death penalty for suspects in the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history. If the judge ultimately accepts guilty pleas, the ability of the Obama administration to transfer the case to federal court -- a desire expressed by some Obama advisers -- might be constrained, said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
A guilty plea, however, could shield the Obama administration from what some legal experts view as potentially hazardous proceedings in federal court, where evidence obtained by torture or coercive interrogation would not be admitted. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has acknowledged that Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding, an interrogation technique in which a prisoner is restrained as water is poured over his mouth, causing a drowning sensation. Although legal analysts say Mohammed and his co-conspirators would probably be convicted of terrorist offenses, the ability to obtain a capital conviction may have been undermined by the use of practices that have been criticized as torture. "It is absurd to accept a guilty plea from people who were tortured and waterboarded," said Romero, who is observing the proceedings. He said in an interview that the Obama administration should clearly signal that it intends to abolish the military commissions as well as the detention system, so the judge and other Pentagon officials will not move forward with the proceeding. The Obama team declined to comment Monday. Offering to plead guilty along with Mohammed were Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Tawfiq bin Attash and Ammar al-Baluchi, also known as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali. Baluchi is a nephew of Mohammed. "Our success is the greatest praise of the Lord," Mohammed and the four others wrote of the attacks in a document they sent to Henley last month. Binalshibh and Hawsawi have not yet been judged competent to represent themselves, and Mohammed and the two others said they would defer a decision on a guilty plea until all five could act together. But the motivation behind withdrawing the plea offer appears to be the prospect of execution, lawyers here said. Mohammed has expressed a desire to die as a martyr, yet Henley questioned whether a death sentence is permissible without a verdict by a military jury. The Pentagon, in announcing formal charges against the five in May, said each was accused of "conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism." "We all five have reached an agreement to request from the commission an immediate hearing session in order to announce our confessions," the defendants said in their letter, parts of which Henley read aloud Monday. They said they were not under "any kind of pressure, threat, intimidations or promise from any party." | |
Link |
Home Front: WoT |
KSM, Four Others Offer to Plead Guilty at Guantanamo Bay |
2008-12-09 |
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed operational mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and four co-defendants told a U.S. military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Monday that they want to make a "confession" and enter guilty pleas to murder and war-crimes charges in the death-penalty case. The startling announcement came at the start of what was supposed to be a week of pre-trial hearings on various motions. It could create a major dilemma for the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama, who has said he wants to close the Guantanamo detention facility and prosecute defendants such as Mohammed in federal courts. Judge Stephen R. Henley, an Army colonel, asked three of the defendants who are representing themselves if they were willing to enter guilty pleas Monday. All said they were ready to do so. Henley read from a document that the five sent him on Nov. 4 after they met together that day to plot legal strategy. The five said they had decided to "announce our confessions and plea in full," according to the document, which Henley read in court. "Our success is the greatest praise of the Lord," the judge read from the document. Offering to plead guilty along with Mohammed were Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Tawfiq bin Attash and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali. A nephew of Mohammed's, Ali is also known as Ammar al-Baluchi. Henley said he would not be able to accept pleas anytime soon from two defendants, Binalshibh and Hawsawi, because the court has yet to hold hearings on whether they are mentally competent to represent themselves. Mohammed later told the court he would not enter a plea until a decision was made on whether the two can defend themselves. "I want to postpone pleas until decision is made about the other brothers," Mohammed said. The military court was told in an earlier hearing that Binalshibh, an alleged liaison between the hijackers and al-Qaeda's leadership, is being administered psychotropic drugs. An attorney for Hawsawi, a Saudi and alleged financier of the attacks, said Monday he had requested a mental competency hearing for his client, but the lawyer did not provide any details on what prompted his concern. Mohammed said he wants to end the death-penalty case quickly. He has previously expressed a desire to be executed, which he said would allow him to die a martyr. "I understand we are in a big drama," said Mohammed. "We don't want to waste our time with motions and motions." Earlier Monday, he requested the dismissal of the military attorney who has been advising him. |
Link |
Home Front: WoT |
Activist turned extremist, US says |
2008-08-12 |
Extremist, which is Boston Globese for "terrorist"... WASHINGTON - She was a tiny woman with big convictions. While her fellow students at MIT read newspaper articles about the massacre of Muslims in Bosnia in the 1990s, Aafia Siddiqui sprang to action, giving slide shows and rousing speeches to collect donations for their cause. While other women from traditional Pakistani families stayed home after marriage, Siddiqui juggled the demands of motherhood, a doctoral dissertation at Brandeis, and a Roxbury-based nonprofit organization she established to spread Islamic teachings. But yesterday, federal prosecutors in New York alleged that Siddiqui's activism had become extremism. US officials say that the 36-year-old mother of three became an Al Qaeda operative who ended up in Afghanistan and attacked US soldiers who had come to interrogate her. "She is a high security risk," said Christopher Lloyd LaVigne, assistant US attorney, told a judge at a hearing yesterday. Now, those who knew Siddiqui in Boston are struggling to understand how the MIT graduate and trained neuroscientist could pose "a clear and present danger to America," as the FBI alleges. "Something went awry," said Abdullah Faaruuq, imam of Roxbury's Mosque for the Praising of Allah, to which Siddiqui donated Korans and other books. Speculating that she may have been mistreated, Faaruuq said: "She was not at that mindset when I knew her. I don't what could have led to that." Intelligence officials believe that Siddiqui, considered the world's most-wanted female before her arrest, became affiliated with Al Qaeda while in Boston. Though the FBI had sought her in 2003, she returned to her native Pakistan with her children and went underground before agents found her, according to interviews with US officials and documents from the FBI and the director of national intelligence. US officials say she eluded them until last month when she was arrested with an unidentified teenage boy in Ghazni, Afghanistan. Local police caught the two outside the provincial governor's compound with chemicals, maps, and documents on explosives, according to court papers. "They were here for suicide bombing," an Afghan official in Ghazni told the Globe in a telephone interview last week. "Both of them were looking like they were prepared for suicide." Siddiqui is also accused of shooting at US officials who had come to interrogate her. She allegedly grabbed an M-4 rifle and opened fire; she was wounded when a soldier returned fire. Last week, FBI officials brought her to New York for trial in the attempted shooting. The teenage boy, who relatives fear might be Siddiqui's son, remains in Afghan custody, according to the Afghan official. Siddiqui appeared in court in a wheelchair yesterday. A judge ordered her held without bail, but granted her access to immediate medical care. Her attorney, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, said Siddiqui is innocent, swept up in the war on terrorism. Sharp also accused the US government of secretly holding her client for years. "She doesn't know how many years, but it was the same location, and her captors were Americans, and the treatment was horrendous," Sharp said in a telephone interview Friday after a three-hour meeting with Siddiqui in a New York detention center. Sharp would not say how Siddiqui turned up in Afghanistan, saying, "Long story, can't tell you that." Drinking again, Elaine? The mystery of Siddiqui's whereabouts for the last five years adds yet another twist to the bizarre tale of her transformation from an MIT student activist to international terrorism suspect awaiting trial in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center. Born to an educated, religious family in Karachi, Siddiqui spent years volunteering with the United Islamic Organization, a charity run by her mother, according to fund-raising e-mails she sent to friends in 1995 which The Boston Globe has obtained. She moved to the United States as a teenager in 1990, joining her brother, an architect in Houston, and her sister, a neurologist. In 1991, after transferring from the University of Houston, Siddiqui arrived at MIT, wearing Western clothes but covering her hair with a scarf in the Muslim tradition. She quickly honed her activist skills, using the Internet and delivering passionate appeals to raise funds for Islamic causes. In one instance, she organized financial sponsorships for Muslim widows and orphans in Bosnia. "Kindly fill the pledge form and return to Al-Kifah," she directed a group of potential donors in an e-mail. The message appears to refer to the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, which the Justice Department has accused of diverting charitable funds to militants. She helped establish the Dawa Resource Center, a program that operates out of Faaruuq's mosque, distributing Korans and offering Islam-based advice to prison inmates. Faaruuq's wife, who asked that her name not be used, said that Siddiqui gave powerful speeches at conferences in the Boston area urging women, especially new converts to Islam, to embrace traditional Muslim customs, including wearing the headscarf and declining to shake a man's hand. "She shared with us that we should never make excuses for who we are," said Faaruuq's wife. "She said: 'Americans have no respect for people who are weak. Americans will respect us if we stand up and we are strong.' " Around the time she graduated from MIT in 1995, Siddiqui married Muhammad Khan, an anesthesiologist from Karachi who became a resident at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. At first, the couple seemed happy, hosting friends for meals in their apartment on St. Alphonsus Street in Roxbury. Shortly after her marriage, Siddiqui gave birth to a son and bore a daughter, Maram Bint Muhammad, in September 1998 at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center. But the arranged marriage soured within a few years when Khan disapproved of his wife's activism, according to a 2005 Vogue Magazine profile titled, "The Most Wanted Woman in the World." In the spring of 2002, months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, FBI agents questioned the couple about their purchase of night-vision goggles, body armor, and military instruction manuals, according to Sharp. The Globe probably thinks they were for bird watching... Months later, the family returned to Pakistan, where Siddiqui and Khan divorced just before the birth of their third child, according to Sharp. Siddiqui then married an Al Qaeda operative known as Ammar al-Baluchi, the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to documents from the director of national intelligence. In March 2003, Mohammed was arrested in a predawn raid in Islamabad. He and Baluchi were held for years in secret US detention and are now awaiting trial at Guantanamo Bay. Within weeks of Mohammed's arrest, Siddiqui's photo appeared on the FBI website as a person wanted for questioning. Afraid the FBI would find her in Karachi, Siddiqui told her family she was taking her children to Islamabad to stay with an uncle, but the family never arrived, said Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricketer turned politician."She was petrified because the FBI had put her on a most-wanted list," said Khan, who said that Siddiqui's uncle asked him to help find her. With her whereabouts unknown, sketchy reports in Pakistani papers suggested that she had been arrested in Pakistan and was turned over to the Americans, prompting anti-US protests in Pakistan. Amnesty International listed Siddiqui as possibly among the "ghost prisoners" held in secret by the US government. Her anguished mother traveled to the United States in search of clues. But yesterday, US officials vehemently denied that Siddiqui had been in American custody until her recent arrest. Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, called the allegations "absolutely baseless and false." A CIA spokesman also denied that she had been detained. "For several years, we have had no information regarding her whereabouts whatsoever," said Gregory Sullivan, a State Department spokesman on South Asian affairs. "It is our belief that she . . . has all this time been concealed from the public view by her own choosing." |
Link |
Home Front: WoT |
US May Ask Death for 9-11 Suspects |
2008-02-11 |
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon is planning to charge six detainees at Guantanamo Bay for the Sept. 11 terror attacks on America and seek the death penalty. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said an announcement of the charges could come Monday. A second official said that military leaders also will seek the death penalty for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Among those held at Guantanamo is Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the attack six years ago in which hijacked planes were flown into buildings in New York and Washington. Five others are expected to be named in sworn charges. "The department has been working diligently to prepare cases and bring charges against a number of individuals who have been involved in some of the most grievous acts of violence and terror against the United States and our allies," Whitman said. Prosecutors have been working for years to assemble the case against suspects in the attacks in New York and Washington that prompted the Bush administration to launch its global war on terror. "The prosecution team is close to moving forward on referring charges on a number of individuals," Whitman said, declining to name the defendants. The New York Times reported in Monday's editions that the others are Mohammed al-Qahtani, the man officials have labeled the 20th hijacker; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, said to have been the main intermediary between the hijackers and leaders of Al Qaeda; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who has been identified as Mohammed's lieutenant for the 2001 operation; al- Baluchi's assistant, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi; and Walid bin Attash, a detainee known as Khallad, who investigators say selected and trained some of the hijackers. |
Link |
G'morning... | |
2007-04-14 | |
Link |