9/11 Defendants Proudly state :"We are Terrorists To the Bone" - Big Big Forums

Jolie Rouge · 03-10-2009, 12:35 PM

[b]Guantanamo detainees say they planned Sept. 11
2 hrs 29 mins ago[/i]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The five detainees at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison camp charged with plotting the September 11 attacks have filed a document expressing pride at their accomplishment and accepting responsibility for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The document, which the newspaper said may be released publicly on Tuesday, describes the five men as the "9/11 Shura Council," and says their actions were an offering to God, according to excerpts of the document read to a reporter by an unidentified government official, the report said.

"'To us,' the official read, 'they are not accusations. To us they are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor,'" the paper said.

The document is titled "The Islamic Response to the Government's Nine Accusations," the military judge at the U.S. Naval base said in a separate filing, obtained by the Times, that described the detainees' document.

The document was filed on behalf of the five men, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who has called himself the mastermind of the attacks.

Some of the men had said earlier that they planned the 2001 attacks and that they wanted to be martyrs. The reason for the new filing, which the report said reached the military court on March 5, was not clear. The brief court order describing the filing said the men sought no legal action.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090310/...VhbnRhbmFtb2Rl

See also : Five 9/11 defendants Justify the Attacks
9/11 Defendants Proudly state :"We are Terrorists To the Bone"
27 mins ago

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Five men charged with the Sept. 11 attacks say they "are terrorists to the bone" in their most detailed response to U.S. war crimes charges.

The five Guantanamo prisoners seek to justify the attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The Associated Press on Tuesday obtained the six-page court filing in which the defendants refer to Sept. 11 as "the great attack on America."

The five include self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He has acknowledged responsibility in the past.

President Barack Obama suspended their trial in January as his administration evaluates the war crimes trials.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090310/...ExZGVmZW5kYW4-

justice250 · 03-10-2009, 01:26 PM

Are these the ones that Obama wants to let go free?

SurferGirl · 03-10-2009, 03:04 PM

These terrorists have already admitted that they are guilty.
We should execute them and to keep them from becoming martyrs we should dress them in pink tights and ballet outfits and show pictures of their executions.

These are the monsters that our current "president" has decided to close Gitmo and give them all "fair" trials.

This is not fair at all to the family members of the victims of 9/11 as there was no justice for the family members of those killed on the Cole.

We still have a war on terrorism going so these should be held until that war is over, not let loose so they can plan other attacks.

Nice going Obama. You have really proved where your loyalties are.

Jolie Rouge · 11-17-2009, 12:48 PM

The question of the day
By: Mark Hemingway Commentary Staff Writer
11/13/09 3:59 PM EST

Powerline:

Ask yourself this question: Suppose that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's trial results in an acquittal or a hung jury. Would the Obama administration really let him go? If so, they are crazy. If not, why are they holding the trial?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/op...-69999347.html

Jolie Rouge · 11-17-2009, 01:56 PM

Is America a Serious Nation?
Pat Buchanan Tue Nov 17, 3:00 am ET

Are we at war — or not?

For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?

Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies — that he may not be guilty.

And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial.

When the Justice Department sets up a task force to wage war on a crime organization like the Mafia or MS-13, no U.S. official has a right to shoot Mafia or gang members on sight. No one has a right to bomb their homes. No one has a right to regard the possible death of their wives and children in an attack as acceptable collateral damage.

Yet that is what we do to al-Qaida, to which KSM belongs.

We conduct those strikes in good conscience because we believe we are at war. But if we are at war, what is KSM doing in a U.S. court?

Minoru Genda, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval base on U.S. soil, when America was at peace, and killed as many Americans as the Sept. 11 hijackers, was not brought here for trial. He was an enemy combatant under the Geneva Conventions and treated as such.

When Maj. Andre, the British spy and collaborator of Benedict Arnold, was captured, he got a military tribunal, after which he was hanged. When Gen. Andrew Jackson captured two British subjects in Spanish Florida aiding renegade Indians, Jackson had both tried and hanged on the spot.

Enemy soldiers who commit atrocities are not sent to the United States for trial. Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers who commit atrocities are shot when caught.

When and where did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed acquire his right to a trial by a jury of his peers in a U.S. court?

When John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, alleged collaborators like Mary Surratt were tried before a military tribunal and hanged at Ft. McNair. When eight German saboteurs were caught in 1942 after being put ashore by U-boat, they were tried in secret before a military commission and executed, with the approval of the Supreme Court. What makes KSM special?

Is the Obama administration aware of what it is risking by not turning KSM over to a military tribunal in Guantanamo?

How does Justice handle a defense demand for a change of venue, far from lower Manhattan, where the jury pool was most deeply traumatized by Sept. 11? Would not KSM and his co-defendants, if a change of venue is denied, have a powerful argument for overturning any conviction on appeal?

Were not KSM's Miranda rights impinged when he was not only not told he could have a lawyer on capture, but that his family would be killed and he would be water-boarded if he refused to talk?

And if all the evidence against the five defendants comes from other than their own testimony under duress, do not their lawyers have a right to know when, where, how and from whom Justice got the evidence to prosecute them? Does KSM have the right to confront all witnesses against him, even if they are al-Qaida turncoats or U.S. spies still transmitting information to U.S. intelligence?

There have been reports that in the trials of those convicted in the first World Trade Center bombing, sources and methods were compromised, weakening our security for the second attack on Sept. 11.

If the trial is held in lower Manhattan, how much security will be needed to protect against a car bomber who wants the world to see a mighty blow struck against the Great Satan? And if, as some suggest, the trial should be held on Governor's Island, would that not make the United States look like a nation under siege?

What do we do if the case against KSM is thrown out because the government refuses to reveal sources or methods, or if he gets a hung jury, or is acquitted, or has his conviction overturned?

In America, trials often become games, where the prosecution, though it has truth on its side, loses because it inadvertently breaks one of the rules.

The Obamaites had best pray that does not happen, for they may be betting his presidency on the outcome of the game about to begin.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20091117/...bux/op_3312006

3/48

Jolie Rouge · 11-18-2009, 12:52 AM

First US trial of 9/11 case was full of surprises
By Matthew Barakat And Michael J. Sniffen, Associated Press Writers
2 hrs 1 min ago

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Zacarias Moussaoui was a clown who could not keep his mouth shut, according to his old al-Qaida boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. But Moussaoui was surprisingly tame when tried for the 9/11 attacks — never turning the courtroom into the circus of anti-U.S. tirades that some fear Mohammed will create at his trial in New York.

And that wasn't the only surprise during Moussaoui's six-week 2006 sentencing trial here — a proceeding that might foreshadow how the upcoming 9/11 trial in New York will go.

Skeptics who feared prosecutors would be hamstrung by how much evidence was secret were stunned at the enormous amount of classified data that was scrubbed, under pressure from the judge, into a public version acceptable to both sides.

Prosecutors were surprised when they failed to get the death penalty — by the vote of one juror.

No one was more surprised than Moussaoui himself: At the end he concluded an al-Qaida member like him could get a fair trial in a U.S. court.

"I had thought that I would be sentenced to death based on the emotions and anger toward me for the deaths on Sept. 11," Moussaoui said in an appeal deposition taken after he was sentenced to life in prison. "(B)ut after reviewing the jury verdict and reading how the jurors set aside their emotions and disgust for me and focused on the law and the evidence ... I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial."

All that suggests the dire predictions of critics and confident assertions of proponents should be viewed skeptically as prosecutors prepare to put Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four of his alleged henchmen on trial in a civilian federal court.

The five had been headed for a military tribunal at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week he would charge them in civilian court and expects to seek the death penalty.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over Moussaoui's trial — the first in this country over 9/11 — believes it proved federal courts can handle terror cases: "I've reached the conclusion that the system does work," she said in 2008.

The first lesson from Moussaoui's case: Don't expect a speedy trial.

Moussaoui was charged in December 2001 with conspiracy for his role. The case churned through years of pretrial hearings and appeals as judges sought to balance national security with Moussaoui's constitutional rights, often over what evidence could be used.

Documents later introduced at trial showed Moussaoui and Mohammed were well acquainted and Mohammed told interrogators he planned to use Moussaoui as a pilot for a second wave of hijacked jetliner attacks — plans that were eventually aborted. But Mohammed considered Moussaoui a problematic operative, who took instructions poorly and recklessly ignored directions to minimize communications.

Eventually, in 2005, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Under the complex rules for federal death penalty cases, a separate sentencing trial was held in 2006 to determine whether Moussaoui would lose his life or spend the rest of it in prison. In the first phase, jurors concluded Moussaoui's actions were eligible for the death penalty, but in the second phase they spared his life — thanks to a lone holdout juror.

During the long run-up to trial, Moussaoui's abusive tirades in handwritten motions and outbursts in hearings created concerns the jury trial would devolve into chaos. Brinkema threatened to lock him in a separate room watching by video if he tried that.

Mindful of that threat, Moussaoui sat quietly at his separate table flanked by deputy marshals. On the few occasions he was called upon to speak, Brinkema kept him tightly on topic.

His theatrics were confined to one-liners — like "Victory for Moussaoui! God curse you all!" — that he tossed off to spectators as he left the courtroom after the jury departed for lunch or the day.

In military tribunal hearings at Guantanamo, Mohammed also showed a propensity for grandstanding. In one letter released by that tribunal, he referred to the attacks as a "noble victory" and urged U.S. authorities to "pass your sentence on me and give me no respite."

One of Moussaoui's lawyers, Edward MacMahon, isn't worried about Mohammed's behavior in court. "Federal judges deal all the time with defendants who try to disrupt cases," he said.

MacMahon, himself the target of some of Moussaoui's epithets, said he thought the trial "was a very dignified process."

Lead prosecutor Rob Spencer, now with Lockheed Martin Corp., said the Moussaoui trial allowed the public to see that Moussaoui took pride in the terror created by the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

"A valuable part of the Moussaoui trial was that we got an unvarnished, public view of this guy ... of what we're up against" in dealing with al-Qaida terrorists, Spencer said.

Sorting through classified evidence should be easier in the upcoming case, experts said. First, the Moussaoui case generated detailed appellate rulings to guide lower courts. Second, much that was highly sensitive in 2003 may be far less so now.

On the other hand, there was no allegation Moussaoui was tortured into confessing, but coerced confessions or statements might be significant at Mohammed's trial. U.S. civilian courts bar evidence obtained under coercion, which could exclude what Mohammed told investigators after, as the Justice Department has acknowledged, he was waterboarded 183 times.

But there are also statements Mohammed made much later bragging about his role, and statements by others subjected to less harsh interrogation methods that fewer people consider to be torture, so there's grist for much legal argument.

Paul McNulty, U.S. attorney here when Moussaoui was prosecuted, said there is a crucial difference in the two cases: Moussaoui pleaded guilty, so the sentencing trial focused only on his punishment and there was no chance he'd go free. No one knows whether any New York defendants will contest their guilt.

McNulty wondered whether the public is willing to accept the chance of an acquittal.

McNulty expects New York judges to be as tough as Brinkema on issues like ensuring defendants access to witnesses. "It could get complicated very quickly," he said.

"It's not supposed to be easy," defense counsel MacMahon said. "The law makes it very difficult to obtain a death sentence. The government basically has to pitch a perfect game to win a death penalty."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091118/...N0dXN0cmlhbA--

Jolie Rouge · 11-18-2009, 05:34 PM

Obama, Holder predict conviction in 9/11 case
By Devlin Barrett, Associated Press Writer
10 mins ago

WASHINGTON – From opposite ends of the globe, President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder firmly rejected criticism Wednesday of the planned New York trial of the professed Sept. 11 mastermind and predicted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be exposed as a murderous coward, convicted and executed.

"Failure is not an option," Holder declared.

The president, in a series of TV interviews during his trip to Asia, said those offended by the legal rights accorded Mohammed by virtue of his facing a civilian trial rather than a military tribunal won't find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him."

Obama, who is a lawyer, quickly added that he did not mean to suggest he was prejudging the outcome of Mohammed's trial. "I'm not going to be in that courtroom," he said. "That's the job of the prosecutors, the judge and the jury."

The president said in interviews broadcast on NBC and CNN that experienced prosecutors in the case who specialize in terrorism have offered assurances that "we'll convict this person with the evidence they've got, going through our system."

In Washington, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Holder for hours about his decision to send Mohammed and four others from the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to New York for trial in a federal courthouse blocks from the site of the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

The attorney general said he is certain the men will be convicted, but even if a suspect were acquitted, "that doesn't mean that person would be released into our country."

Tempers flared when Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., challenged Holder to say how a civilian trial could be the best idea, since Mohammed had previously sought to plead guilty before a military commission.

"How can you be more likely to get a conviction in a (civilian) court than that?" pressed Kyl, to applause from some in the hearing room.

The attorney general said his decision was not based "on the whims or the desires of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ... He will not select the prosecution venue. I will. And I have."

Critics of Holder's decision — mostly Republicans — have argued the trial will give Mohammed a world stage to spout hateful rhetoric.

Holder said such concerns are misplaced, because judges can control unruly defendants and any pronouncements by Mohammed would only make him look worse.

"I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is," Holder told the committee. "I'm not scared of what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has to say at trial — and no one else needs to be, either."

Democrats on the panel were largely supportive of the administration's decision.

"We're the most powerful nation on earth; we have a justice system that is the envy of the world. We will not be afraid," said Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Among the spectators were some relatives of 9/11 victims who disagree with Holder's plan to put Mohammed, the most senior al-Qaida suspect in U.S. custody, on public trial.

Opponents of the plan, including Holder's predecessor, Michael Mukasey, have accused him of adopting a "pre-9/11" approach to terrorism.

Holder emphatically denied that.

"We are at war, and we will use every instrument of national power — civilian, military, law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic and others — to win," Holder said.

But South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called the decision "a perversion of justice" by putting wartime enemies into the civilian criminal justice system. "We're making history, and we're making bad history," Graham said.

The attorney general said he does not believe holding the trial in New York — at a federal courthouse that has seen a number of high-profile terrorism trials in recent decades — will increase the risk of terror attacks there.

He also voiced support for extra federal money for the city to help safeguard the area while the trials are under way.

Alice Hoagland, whose son Mark Bingham died aboard Flight 93, spoke with Holder after the hearing had ended. One of four jetliners hijacked on 9/11, Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field after passengers rushed the cabin.

"We are heartsick and weary of the delays and machinations," said Hoagland, of Redwood Estates, Calif.

Holder sought to reassure her there was evidence, not yet made public, that makes federal court the best place to try Mohammed.

"I guess what I'm saying is trust me," the attorney general said quietly, as reporters and security staff crowded around the pair.

"I will trust you. I will defer judgment," said Hoagland, though she added she still has serious doubts about his plan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091118/...s_sept11_trial

Jolie Rouge · 11-19-2009, 01:39 AM

Holder: If KSM somehow is not convicted, he will still not be released – may be sent to Bagram
Posted by: Sister Toldjah on November 18, 2009 at 10:49 pm

So much for trying to demonstrate to the world the “fairness” of our justice system: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1369060/

Quote:

Facing a wave of critics warning of the risks of putting Mr. Mohammed on trial, Mr. Holder bluntly asserted that “failure isn’t a option” when asked during a Congressional hearing whether Mr. Mohammed and other key terrorist suspects will be convicted. Acquittals, claims of asylum and even judicial orders freeing them won’t result in releases, he asserted.

“If there is not a successful conclusion to this trial, that would not mean that this person would be released,” Mr. Holder bluntly told the Congressional hearing, referring to Mr. Mohammed – the self-proclaimed planner of the Sept 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.

“What if a federal judge orders the Department of Justice to release Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?” Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn asked. “Will you defy that order?”

Mr. Holder made it clear that by moving Mr. Mohammed to a prison offshore – such as Bagram in Afghanistan, where hundreds of detainees are held – a release order could be circumvented.

“We have taken the view that the judiciary does not have the ability necessarily to certainly require us to, with people who are held overseas, to release them,” he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine a set of circumstances, given the other things that we could do with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed” that would result in him being freed,” the Attorney-General said.

“Under the regime we are contemplating … the ability to detain under laws of war, we would retain that ability,” Mr. Holder added, meaning anyone freed by the courts could simply be returned as an enemy combatant to indefinite military detention.

Mr. Obama, a former law professor, denied he was interfering with Mr. Mohammed’s right to a fair trial. “I’m not prejudging it,” he said in a televised NBC interview. “I’m not going to be in that courtroom. That’s the job of the prosecutors, the judge and the jury,” he said.

Like I said this morning, this so-called “trial for justice for the 9-11 victims” is a pretense for this administration. If their whole point in this trial is to demonstrate to the world that we have a “fair and just” system, then proclaiming KSM guilty and deciding his punishment before he’s had a trial – and suggesting that even if he isn’t found guilty that he will still be held and possibly sent to Bagram is certainly unlike any “fair and just” system I’ve ever heard of. Essentially, Holder is saying, “If we don’t like the verdict, we still have options for keeping him in custody.”

Huh??

All the options he put on the table in the event of a not guilty verdict for KSM are options he should have taken advantage of instead of going the route he’s chosen to with this farcical show trial.

Really. Wake me up when amateur hour is over in this WH!

http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/20...ent-to-bagram/

In other words, in an effort to get the world to see just how fair our system of justice is Mr. Holder has just told the world that the verdicts (”failure is not an option”) are as assured as those for the trials of the five hikers in Iran, or the leaders of the latest Iranian revolution Duh-1 didn’t want to get involved in because he didn’t want to upset the apple cart.

Jolie Rouge · Today, 02:02 AM

Lawyer: 9/11 defendants want platform for views
By Karen Matthews, Associated Press Writer
2 hrs 29 mins ago

NEW YORK – The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it."

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center.

Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy," Fenstermaker said.

"Their assessment is negative," he said.

Fenstermaker met with Ali last week at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He has not spoken with the others but said the men have discussed the trial among themselves.

Fenstermaker was first quoted in The New York Times in Sunday's editions.

Critics of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try the men in a New York City civilian courthouse have warned that the trial would provide the defendants with a propaganda platform.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said Sunday that while the men may attempt to use the trial to express their views, "we have full confidence in the ability of the courts and in particular the federal judge who may preside over the trial to ensure that the proceeding is conducted appropriately and with minimal disruption, as federal courts have done in the past."

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Holder for hours about his decision to send the five 9/11 suspects to New York for trial.

Critics of Holder's decision — mostly Republicans — argued the trial will give Mohammed and his co-defendants a world stage to spout hateful rhetoric. Holder said such concerns are misplaced, and any pronouncements by the suspects would only make them look worse.

"I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is," Holder told the committee. "I'm not scared of what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has to say at trial — and no one else needs to be, either."

The attorney general said he does not believe holding the trial in New York — at a federal courthouse that has seen a number of high-profile terrorism trials in recent decades — will increase the risk of terror attacks there.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091123/...llcjkxMWRlZg--

Jolie Rouge · Today, 02:06 AM

This combination of undated photos shows, from left: Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Waleed bin Attash, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Ramzi Binalshibh. The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday, Nov. 22, 2009.
(AP Photos)

Jolie Rouge · Today, 04:22 PM

Bleeding-heart Barack Obama and interest-conflicted Eric Holder are all too happy to serve as executive directors for the 9/11 show trials.

Hey, why not turn them into a Broadway play while you’re at it, White House?

Just a reminder of what Obama wrote about the 9/11 jihadists eight days after the attack left 3,000 innocent men, women, and children dead on American soil: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...t_lizza/?yrail

Quote:

“We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.”

MM's response last year:

Quote:

As for Obama’s continued delusion about the “climate of poverty and ignorance” that supposedly breeds Muslim terrorists, can American politicians ever rid themselves of this unreality-based trope? This belief is part and parcel of the same idiocy that lead the State Department to embrace “spa days” for Muslims to “build bridges” with the Arab world and President Bush to open up our aviation schools to more Saudi students to “improve understanding.” John McCain also alluded to education-as-cure for Islamic terrorism at the L.A. World Affairs Council in March, when he declared that “In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs.” Just what we need: more student visas for the jihadi-infested nation that sent us the bulk of the 9/11 hijackers.

Author and National Review Online blogger Mark Steyn’s sharp rejoinder to McCain then applies to Obama now: “There’s plenty of evidence out there that the most extreme ‘extremists’ are those who’ve been most exposed to the west – and western education: from Osama bin Laden (summer school at Oxford, punting on the Thames) and Mohammed Atta (Hamburg University urban planning student) to the London School of Economics graduate responsible for the beheading of Daniel Pearl. The idea that handing out college scholarships to young Saudi males and getting them hooked on Starbucks and car-chase movies will make this stuff go away is ridiculous – and unworthy of a serious presidential candidate.”

Ayman al-Zawahiri didn’t need more education or wealth to steer him away from Islamic imperialism and working toward a worldwide caliphate. He has a medical degree. So does former Hamas biggie Abdel Rantissi. Seven upper-middle-class jihadi doctors were implicated in the 2007 London/Glasgow bombings. Suspected al Qaeda scientist Affia Siddiqui, still wanted by the FBI for questioning, is a Pakistani who studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis.

And as I’ve reported before and must reiterate again for the hard of hearing in Washington, lowering academic standards at American colleges helped al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed further the jihadi cause. In the early 1980s, he enrolled at tiny Chowan College in Murfreesburo, N.C., which had dropped its English requirements to attract–ahem–wealthy Middle Easterners. At Chowan, Mohammed bonded with other Arab Muslim foreign students known as “The Mullahs” for their religious zeal. Mohammed then transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he earned his degree in mechanical engineering along with 30 other Muslims. Mohammed applied his Western learning to oversee the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot (six Americans dead), the U.S.S. Cole attack (17 American soldiers dead), and the September 11 attacks (3,000 dead). He has also been linked to the 1998 African-embassy bombings (212 dead, including 12 Americans), the plot to kill the pope, the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, and the Bali nightclub bomb blast that killed nearly 200 tourists, including two more Americans.

Perhaps bleeding-heart Obama thinks a master’s degree in social work would have convinced poverty-stricken, helpless, ignorant, despairing Mohammed to change his mind?

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/22...-bash-america/

Here we go: World meddling in 9/11 show trials begins

That didn’t take long, did it?
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4914841,00.html

Quote:

A legal team is going to New York to prevent the use of evidence provided by Germany in seeking a death penalty. Berlin wants to ensure that promises made by the US are kept if the suspects are found guilty.

A team of observers from the German government is going to New York to oversee the trial of five suspects accused of orchestrating the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

The federal trial of the suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants was announced on November 13 by the US Justice Department. The government also asserted that it intends to seek the death penalty if the accused are found guilty.

Germany, which does not have a death penalty, provided evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence. Several members of the al Qaeda cell that planned and executed the attacks of September 11 were previously based in the northern German city of Hamburg.

“In this case we will observe very closely that the given assurances are kept,” Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said.

Remember: It’s all about putting America on trial, not the jihadists.

***

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/23...trials-begins/