'Engaging in jihad'

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Janet Hamlin / The Associated Press Accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appears in this courtroom sketch at his military commission hearing in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (TRIBUNE MEDIA MCT)

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Roberto Robanne / The Associated Press archives The twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York burn during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (CP)

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- They knelt in prayer, ignored the judge and wouldn't listen to Arabic translations as they confronted nearly 3,000 counts of murder. The self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four co-defendants defiantly disrupted an arraignment that dragged into Saturday night in the opening act of the long-stalled effort to prosecute them in a military court.

Their refusal to participate in the hearing helped bring their arraignment to a crawl. It took more than eight hours for the judge at the U.S. military base in Cuba to ask the men to enter pleas to 2,976 counts of murder and terrorism in the 2001 attacks that sent hijacked jetliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The men all deferred their pleas.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted 9/11 architect, cast off his earphones providing Arabic translations of the proceeding and refused to answer Army Col. James Pohl's questions or acknowledge he understood them.

All five men refused to participate in the hearing; two passed around a copy of The Economist magazine and leafed through the articles.

Walid bin Attash was confined to a restraint chair when he came into court, released only after he promised to behave.

Ramzi Binalshibh knelt in prayer alongside his defence table with Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali in the middle of the hearing, then launched into an incoherent tirade about the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and declared he was in danger. "Maybe they will kill me and say I committed suicide," he said in a mix of Arabic and broken English.

The detainees' lawyers spent hours questioning the judge about his qualifications to hear the case and suggested their clients were being mistreated at the hearing, in a strategy that could pave the way for future appeals.

It was the defendants' first appearance in more than three years after stalled efforts to try them for the terror attacks, in which hijackers steered four commercial jets into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a western Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.

The defendants' behaviour outraged 9/11 family members watching on closed-circuit video feeds around the United States at East Coast military bases. One viewer shouted, "C'mon, are you kidding me?" at the Fort Hamilton base in Brooklyn.

"They're engaging in jihad in a courtroom," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles, was the pilot of the plane that flew into the Pentagon. She watched the proceeding from Brooklyn.

The Obama administration renewed plans to try the men at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay after a bid to try the men in New York City blocks from the trade centre site faced political opposition.

It adopted new rules with Congress that forbade testimony obtained through torture or cruel treatment and argued the defendants could be tried as fairly here as in a civilian court.

Human rights groups and defence lawyers say the secrecy of Guantanamo and the military commissions, or tribunals, will make it impossible to defend them. They argued the U.S. kept the case out of civilian court to prevent disclosure of the treatment of prisoners like Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times.

Mohammed's civilian lawyer, David Nevin, said he believed Mohammed was not responding because he believes the tribunal is unfair. Jim Harrington, representing Binalshibh, said his client would not respond to questions "without addressing the issues of confinement."

Cheryl Bormann, a civilian attorney for bin Attash, appeared in a conservative Islamic outfit that left only her face uncovered and she asked the court to order other women present to wear "appropriate" clothing so defendants do not have to avert their eyes "for fear of committing a sin under their faith."

Pohl warned he would not permit defendants to block the hearing and would continue without his participation.

"One cannot choose not to participate and frustrate the normal course of business," Pohl said.

Pohl brought translators into the courtroom to interpret the proceedings live once the men refused to use earpieces and attempted to stick to the standard script for tribunals, asking the defendants if they understood their rights to counsel and would accept the attorneys appointed for them.

The men were silent.

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 6, 2012 A4