Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed	Khalid Shaikh Mohammed	al-Qaeda	India-Pakistan	Kuwaiti-Baloch	In Jug	Key Aide	20031028
	Khalid Shaikh Mohammed	Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula	Arabia				20030626
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed named	Khalid Shaikh Mohammed named	Lashkar-e-Jhangvi	Afghanistan/South Asia				20040615	Link

Home Front: WoT

9/11 terrorists to be spared death penalty after judge shoots down Pentagon''s bid to nix plea deals

2025-01-01

[NYPOST] Plea deals for three murderous Moslems behind the 9/11 attacks are back in play after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin lost his bid to nix the disturbing agreements that would spare them the death penalty

A military appeals court on Monday night ruled against Austin's order this summer nullifying plea deals reached with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

...Mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistain in 2002 and interned at Guantanamo...
, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.

The terrorists' defense attorneys argued that the secretary did not have the authority to overturn the agreements after they were already approved by the top authority of the Guantanamo Bay courts in July.

They further claimed that Austin's order was unlawful interference in the case.

The move clears the way for Mohammad, the criminal mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and his co-conspirators to plead guilty in a hearing next week.

However,
Caliphornia hasn't yet slid into the ocean, no matter how hard it's tried...
Austin retains the ability to appeal the decision. Reps for the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors offered the deal to bring about an end to the pretrial court proceedings that have dragged on for more than a decade.

The decision comes after a lower court in November ruled that Austin's order came too late — and that the act was beyond his scope of authority.

''We agree with the military judge that the secretary did not have authority to revoke respondents' existing PTAs because the respondents had started performance of the PTAs,'' the three-judge panel said.

The agreements were originally signed by Pentagon official Susan K. Escallier, whom Austin appointed to be in charge of military commissions.

While the initial blow of the plea deals shook many 9/11 victims' loved ones and survivors, some have told The Post that the on-off nature of their status has put them through an emotional roller coaster.

Courtesy of badanov, Regnum adds:

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

According to the publication, on December 30, the military appeals court overturned the order of US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who in August canceled a pre-trial deal between the prosecution and three terrorists - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi - to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence.

The case of conspiracy with the hijackers has been in the pre-trial stage since 2012.

The defendants are suspected of helping the terrorists who carried out the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001.

As reported by the Regnum news agency, the two towers of the World Trade Center collapsed after terrorists flew two hijacked passenger planes into them. As a result, over 2.6 thousand people died.

A previously unknown video of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on September 11 has emerged. The footage was published by Japanese photographer Kei Sugimoto.

In September 2023, two more victims of the terrorist attacks were identified. The total number of identified victims of the terrorist attacks is 1,649 people. Another 1,104 victims remain unidentified. The names of the identified victims, a man and a woman, are kept secret at the request of their relatives. The victims were identified through DNA analysis of their remains.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Lloyd Austin revokes plea deal with 9/11 plotters

2024-08-03

[X] Responding to this story from two days ago.

Lloyd Austin got this one right.

Thank you. pic.twitter.com/ncMbLCe1vw
— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) August 3, 2024

Courtesy of Skidmark:

Biden-Harris administration backtracks, revokes plea deal for 9/11 terrorists

[FoxNews] A stunning backtrack Friday on the plea deal that Pentagon prosecutors agreed to with three of the terrorists behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks who were awaiting trial in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The deal that stirred national outrage and took the death penalty off of the table has been revoked by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III in a terse memo.

Secretary Austin III is now taking the lead on the case for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad,

…also in our archives as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin 'Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.

In his order, Austin relieved the official in charge of the military commission who had signed off on the original plea deals.

"Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024," the letter from the Secretary of Defense reads.

Link

Terror Networks

9/11 mastermind KSM and two other terrorists awaiting trial on Guantanamo Bay strike plea deals

2024-08-01

[NYPOST] The alleged criminal mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and two other Death Eaters being held on Guantánamo Bay will be spared the death penalty
under a deal with prosecutors, it was revealed Wednesday.

"The Convening Authority for Military Commissions has entered into pretrial agreements with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

...Mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistain in 2002 and interned at Guantanamo...
, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ’Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, three of the co-accused in the 9/11 case," an Office of Military Commissions (OMC) spokesperson confirmed.

The terror suspects will be spared the death penalty as part of the plea agreement, according to the OMC, which sent a letter to victims’ families Wednesday detailing some of the terms of the negotiations.

"In exchange for removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three Accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet," the letter obtained by The Post reads in part.

The news came as a gut-punch for families who have been holding out hope for justice for more than two decades.

"I am very disappointed. We waited patiently for a long time. I wanted the death penalty — the government has failed us," Daniel D’Allara, whose twin brother, John D’Allara, was one of 23 NYPD cops killed the day of the attacks, told The Post.

OMC said the specific terms and conditions of the pretrial agreements were not immediately available. The deals are set to be officially announced Thursday and the guilty plea hearings could take place as soon as next week, with sentencings likely to happen next summer, according to the letter and sources.

It was not immediately known where the men will be incarcerated following their pleas.

The defendants, including accused plotter Mohammed, stand accused of providing training, financial support and other assistance to the 19 Death Eaters who hijacked passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa. on Sept. 11, 2001.

The three accused who have accepted a plea deal — along with Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Ramzi Bin al Shibh — were initially jointly arraigned on June 5, 2008, then again on May 5, 2012, the Department of Defense said in a statement.

The OMC said it first entered into plea deal negotiations with the suspects’ defense counsel in March, 2022.

Victims’ families were outraged by the news that the death penalty was no longer on the table for the suspects, whose alleged actions killed nearly 3,000 in the worst terror attack on US soil in American history.

Link

Britain

Dirty bomb fears as 'several kg of URANIUM' found in cargo at Heathrow: Package 'shipped from Pakistan to UK-based Iranians' at centre of Met Police anti-terror probe after being discovered when airport alarms triggered

2023-01-11

[Daily Mail]

Shipment of uranium has been seized at Heathrow airport, sparking terror fears

The undeclared material was discovered on December 29 on a passenger flight

It was destined for an Iranian business with a premises in the UK, sources say

The package originated from Pakistan and arrived on a flight via Oman

Sources said the uranium was ‘not weapons-grade’ - and so could not be used to manufacture a thermo-nuclear weapon.

But the security services are understood to be investigating whether the undeclared package could have been destined for an improvised nuclear device, known as a ‘dirty bomb’.

Such a device - which has long been a nightmare scenario for counter-terror experts - combines conventional explosives with nuclear material to disperse a lethal radioactive plume.

In 2004 British security services arrested Dhiren Barot, a Muslim convert who planned to assemble and use dirty bombs in the UK and the US to kill members of the public.

Mr. Barot aka Issa al-Hindi headed a Lashkar e-Taiba jihadi cell in the UK that planned a series of attacks against major targets in Britain and the Greater NYC area. His manual for jihad was published in a large enough run that copies could still be found in bookshops six years later.

He was jailed for 30 years.

Link

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]

Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the pilot on American Airlines Flight 77 which crashed into the Pentagon that day, is angry about the possibility

She says she's not alone: 'The families are outraged. They don't want closure, they want justice'

Burlingame says there is no justice for her brother and the families without a death penalty sentence

It was first revealed in March that guilty pleas in exchange for a life sentence could finally bring to a close the over two decade-long case

The anti-war group 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows , has said that the plea deals are in part a good faith agreement due to CIA torture of the five

It was first revealed in March that guilty pleas in exchange for a life sentence could finally bring to a close the over two decade-long case, the longest ever at the war court.

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.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Pentagon prosecutors working on deal to SAVE 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his accomplices from death penalty before his Guantanamo Bay trial

2022-03-16

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]

Guilty pleas in exchange for a life sentence could finally bring to a close the over two decade-long case, the longest ever at the war court

The cases have been bogged down in pretrial proceedings due to the CIA's use of terrorism, but plea agreements could ignite fury from 9/11 families

The al-Qaeda terrorists have been charged with terrorism; hijacking aircraft; conspiracy; murder in violation of the law of war; attacking civilians and more

The five men were allegedly directly involved with hijacking four airplanes and carrying out the coordinated attacks across the US that led to the death of 2,977

They are: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,

...also Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistain in 2002 and interned at Guantanamo...
Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash,

... Walid bin Attash and Waleed bin Attash, a Yemeni who ran an al-Qaeda training camp in Logar, Afghanistan, where two of the 19 hijackers were trained. Bin Attash is believed to have been bin Laden's bodyguard. Authorities say bin Laden selected him as a hijacker, but he was prevented from participating when he was briefly detained in Yemen in early 2001...

Ramzi Bin al-Shibh ,

...a.k.a. Ramzi ibn Al-Shaiba, senior Al Qaeda man involved in the famous Hamburg cell. The unhandsome Yemeni helped find flight schools for the hijackers, helped them enter the United States, and assisted with financing the operation. He was supposed to be a hijacker, but was unable to get a U.S. visa. He also took the lead in a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport...

Ali Abdul Aziz Ali,

...KSM’s nephew and one of KSM’s many relatives in the Karachi cell, also known as Ammar al-Balochi, helped nine of the hijackers travel to the United States and sent them money for expenses and flight training. He was also part of the Heathrow team ...

and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi ,

... also Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and no doubt other variations. Saudi Arabian accused of giving financial backing to the group, he testified in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, saying he had seen Moussaoui at an al-Qaeda guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in early 2001, but somehow was never introduced to him or conducted operations with him...

all expected to face the death penalty if convicted

Update from PJ Media at 10:10 a.m. ET

During the Trump administration, prosecutors tried to work out a plea deal that would have sent the plotters to a supermax prison in Florence, Colo. with life sentences. Those negotiations fell through when the prisoners demanded they serve their life sentences in Guantanamo, which is far less restrictive.

Now the Biden administration, the guys that caused the debacle in Afghanistan

Biden administration, the guys that caused the debacle in Afghanistan

...the pack of self-imagined masterminds of strategy and intrigue at the service of the Biden Crime Family and a grateful nation...
is trying once again to settle the legal situation for KSM and the other plotters and has opened negotiations that would give the snuffies life sentences.

Even with successful negotiations, any deal would have to secure the Pentagon’s approval.
Lapdogs Milley and Austin would surely do whatever they're told
Even the suggestion of a deal during the Trump administration enraged then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who complained to Defense Secretary James N. Mattis about the convening authority, Harvey Rishikof. Shortly after that, Rishikof was fired.

Link

Home Front: WoT

After 15 years in solitary, convicted terrorist pleads for contact with others

2013-02-17

Ramzi Yousef, convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, asks a judge to move him into a more open prison environment. Some agree his treatment is unconstitutional.

All those things we are told happen to people in supermax apparently do. And Mr. Yousef, nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, doesn't like it.

Link

Home Front: WoT

9/11 Mastermind Says He Wants to Die

2012-05-02

A year after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the United States has another opportunity on the horizon to take down a major terrorist figure, albeit in a much different way. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, will finally begin a military commission for the murders of 3,000 Americans at Guantanamo Bay on Saturday morning, when he'll appear at a Guantanamo Bay courtroom for his belated arraignment. But even as the U.S. boasts about the justice its reformed military trials will dispense, those trials might ironically give the man known as KSM the conclusion he sees as a final victory: death.

It's been a long time since KSM was last in court. In 2008, during an arraignment for a commission that ultimately got cancelled, he quickly pled guilty to multiple murder counts. "This is what I want," he told the court, in English. "I'm looking to be martyr for long time."

That case was interrupted for a variety of procedural reasons, and KSM never got his chance. In the intervening years, Congress and the Obama administration reformed the controversial military trials -- making it easier to seek capital punishment, by providing detainees with so-called "learned counsel" lawyers specifically skilled at death-penalty cases, which makes such sentences less likely to be reversed on appeal. Last month, after flipping a key detainee to testify against KSM, the government brought charges against KSM and four alleged accomplices for the 9/11 plot. "If convicted," the Defense Department clarified, "the five accused could be sentenced to death."

Link

Terror Networks

WikiLeaks: KSM beheaded U.S. reporter despite warnings

2011-04-27

Chilling portraits of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other Gitmo detainees from the latest round of WikiLeaks.

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

Judge Refuses to Dismiss Foopy's Case

2010-07-15

At the heart of the debate about where and how to prosecute the men accused of being terrorists who have been held at Guantanamo Bay has been the fear among many that the suspects, tried in a civilian court, would benefit from rights and protections they did not deserve.

The detainees, the concern was, would argue that they had been tortured, and that their cases should be dismissed.

One of them, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who last year became the first Guantanamo detainee to actually be moved into the civilian court system, has argued that his nearly five years in detention before that had deprived him of a fundamental protection afforded all defendants in a federal court: the right to a speedy trial.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Manhattan rejected Mr. Ghailani's claim, and cleared the way for federal prosecutors to try him for his suspected role in Al Qaeda's 1998 bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The judge's ruling is destined to further shape the debate about whether to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others accused of being 9/11 conspirators, in civilian court.

The debate stems from the government's policy since the Sept. 11 attacks to detain hundreds of terrorism suspects without trials, often for years.

But the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan, ruled that Mr. Ghailani's extended incarceration had no adverse impact on his ability to defend himself.

"There is no persuasive evidence that the delay in this prosecution has impaired Ghailani's ability to defend himself in any respect or significantly prejudiced him in any other way pertinent to the speedy trial analysis," Judge Kaplan wrote.

And in a nod to the political debate about trying terrorists in civilian courts, the judge noted: "The court understands that there are those who object to alleged terrorists, especially noncitizens, being afforded rights that are enjoyed by U.S. citizens. Their anger at wanton terrorist attacks is understandable. Their conclusion, however, is unacceptable in a country that adheres to the rule of law."

Mr. Ghailani is facing trial on Sept. 27 on charges he conspired in the two American embassy bombings. The authorities have said that he later trained with Al Qaeda and worked as a bodyguard and a document forger for Osama bin Laden.

After Mr. Ghailani was captured six years ago, he was held in secret overseas jails run by the C.I.A., where he was interrogated in the belief he had important intelligence information about Al Qaeda, the judge noted. In 2006, he was transferred to Guantanamo, and last year, the Obama administration ordered him moved into the civilian system, and he was brought to New York.

"The government is entitled to attempt to hold Ghailani accountable in a court of law for his alleged complicity in the murder of 224 people and the injury of more than 1,000 others," Judge Kaplan wrote.

The ruling comes two months after the judge rejected Mr. Ghailani's argument that his case should be dismissed on grounds of "outrageous" government conduct. Mr. Ghailani contends he was subjected to cruel interrogation techniques while in C.I.A. custody.

"The combined effect of the two rulings is to say that there is a way forward through the federal courts," said Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. "It's the green light," she said.

Of course, lawyers for other detainees, if they are brought into civilian court, would most likely try to distinguish the circumstances of their cases in order to argue, for example, that a detainee was prejudiced by a delay in a way Mr. Ghailani was not.

In his ruling, Judge Kaplan weighed the factors used to assess speedy trial claims, like the length of and reason for a delay, and the prejudice caused to a defendant. While the delay in bringing Mr. Ghailani to trial was long, he said, it "did not materially infringe upon any interest protected by the right to a speedy trial."

Mr. Ghailani's lawyers did not challenge the government's authority to detain him for intelligence gathering. But they said prosecuting him in civilian court so many years later on a 1998 indictment was "perhaps the most egregious violation in the history of speedy-trial jurisprudence."

Federal prosecutors disagreed, contending Mr. Ghailani was a "longstanding Al Qaeda terrorist" who was believed to have "actionable intelligence" about terrorist plots. "This was done, simply put, to save lives," wrote the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan.

Judge Kaplan noted that the specific interrogation techniques used on Mr. Ghailani in his two years of C.I.A. detention remain classified (he discusses them in a classified supplement to his decision). But those two years of delay, the judge said, "served compelling interests of national security."

"Suffice it to say," the judge added, citing the classified record, "the C.I.A. program was effective in obtaining useful intelligence from Ghailani throughout his time in C.I.A. custody."

Link

Southeast Asia

Abu Bakar Bashir's son al-Qa'ida's propaganda man

2010-06-04

Hardline Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir had a direct line to al-Qa'ida around the time of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the US because his son was working in the organisation's propaganda department. The revelation was made by the chief of Indonesia's counter-terrorism taskforce, an outfit known as Detachment 88, as expectations mounted that Bashir could soon be arrested over a terror cell uncovered this year in Aceh province.

Bashir's youngest son, Abdul Rohim, was already known to have spent several years in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the late 1990s engaging in jihad-related activities.

Bashir was closely linked to the 2002 Bali bombings, including a conviction for criminal conspiracy, although that was later overturned on constitutional grounds. Rohim is part of his father's operation at the al-Mukmin school in Solo, Central Java, where Bali bombers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Ali Imron were students.

Brigadier General Tito Karnavian, the head of Detachment 88, has revealed that Rohim, now aged in his early 30s, had lived with September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and was an active member of al-Qa'ida around the time of the US attacks. "Abdul Rohim is a real part of al-Qa'ida because he was staying with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Kandahar, being staff of media, of propaganda, of al-Qa'ida," the anti-terror chief said.

While Rohim's role as a point man between al-Qa'ida and Southeast Asian-based terror groups such as his father's Jemaah Islamiah has been established, the revelation that he was working directly for Osama bin Laden's group as a propagandist is new. It comes as police interrogate members of Bashir's current organisation. Jemaah Anshorut Tawhid, over the preacher's alleged involvement in the recent Aceh terror plot.

Link

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