GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, 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, 2001, attacks and four co-defendants disrupted an arraignment that dragged into Saturday night at the opening of the long-stalled effort to prosecute them in military court.
More than seven hours into the hearing, the judge at the U.S. base in Cuba hadn’t yet read the charges against the men, including 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 in Virginia.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the admitted 9/11 architect, and the four men accused of aiding the 9/11 conspiracy put off their pleas until a later date. Lawyers were still discussing trial dates Saturday night. Another hearing was set for June 12.
Earlier, Mohammed 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 defense table with Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali in the middle of the hearing, then launched into an incoherent tirade about late Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy 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’ attorneys 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 appeals.
It was the defendants’ first appearance in more than three years after stalled efforts to try them for the terrorism 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 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-center site faced political opposition. It adopted new rules with Congress that forbade testimony obtained through torture or cruel treatment, and argued that the defendants could be tried as fairly here as in a civilian court.
Human-rights groups and defense lawyers say the secrecy of Guantanamo and the military commissions, or tribunals, will make it impossible to defend them. They argued that the U.S. kept the case out of civilian court to prevent disclosure of the treatment of prisoners such as Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times.
Mohammed’s civilian attorney, David Nevin, said he thought 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 an Islamic outfit that left only her face uncovered, and she asked the court to order women present to wear “appropriate” clothing so that 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 a defendant’s 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 in person once the men refused to use earpieces in an attempt to stick to the standard script for tribunals, asking the defendants whether they understood their rights to counsel and would accept the attorneys appointed for them.
The men were silent.
