Romero went on to write:
It’s also more than a little ironic that Secretary Austin’s gung-ho insistence on executing the 9/11 defendants directly contradicts the Biden Administration’s public commitment to ending the death penalty. The United States has spent decades and tens of millions of dollars trying to secure a death sentence that cannot be upheld in the face of the government’s torture.
The military detention, torture and prosecution of the 9/11 defendants without due process is part of the attacks by the American political system on basic democratic rights. That the unlawful treatment of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay is part of the deepening crisis of the entire US political system is shown by the fact that these prosecutions have been maintained by four different administrations, two Republican (Bush 2001-2008, Trump 2017-2020) and two Democratic (Obama 2009-2016, Biden 2021-2024).
The rendition of the defendants to CIA black sites and their torture are not in dispute. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, 59, a US-educated engineer and avowed jihadist, is accused of devising the plan to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings. Prosecutors allege that he presented Osama bin Laden with the plan in 1996 and then helped train and direct some of the hijackers.
Mohammed and Hawsawi, 55, were captured together in Pakistan in March 2003. Mohammed was held in secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where he was waterboarded 183 times until he was transferred to the naval base at Guantánamo in September 2006.
Hawsawi is believed to have been held at CIA black sites Afghanistan and Lithuania, where he was subjected to waterboarding and rectal examinations conducted with “excessive force,” which caused serious injuries for which he was denied medical attention.
Walid bin Attash, in his mid-40s, is from Yemen. Prosecutors allege he helped in the preparation of the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings and the USS Cole bombing and was a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. He was apprehended by the CIA in Karachi in 2003 and rendered to black sites in Afghanistan and Poland. Although Attash has only one leg, he was forced to stand in stress positions while his torturers removed his prosthetic leg.
From the WSWS Archives
Twenty years since the September 11 terror attacks
Twenty years on, the analysis made by the WSWS of these events has stood the test of time. We present here the major statements and analysis made contemporaneously by the WSWS over the past two decades.
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Publish date : 2024-08-05 15:59:00
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