Regardless of the end result of their sometime trial, the lads accused of plotting the assaults of Sept. 11, 2001, could be held ceaselessly as prisoners within the warfare in opposition to terrorism in a type of preventive detention, a navy prosecutor informed the presiding decide on Wednesday.
Defense legal professionals had been asking the decide to rule that, if convicted, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, one of many suspects in plotting the assault, would have any sentence to a time period of confinement decreased by the variety of days he was held by the United States earlier than trial. He has been held since 2003.
The argument, in a pretrial listening to within the decade-old Sept. 11 case, was the most recent installment over a long-running, unresolved query of whether or not a prisoner, as soon as he completes a warfare crimes sentence, is entitled to launch from navy detention.
Col. Joshua S. Bearden, an Army prosecutor, mentioned the reply was no. He urged the decide to reject the request as each untimely, as a result of the federal government is in search of the demise penalty within the case, and past the scope of his authority.
No date has been set for the beginning of the trial of the 4 males accused of conspiring within the business airliner hijackings that killed practically 3,000 folks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mr. Hawsawi has been held for the previous 20 years however not as punishment or completely for trial, Colonel Bearden mentioned. The prosecutor mentioned the fees in opposition to Mr. Hawsawi had been separate from the detention that retains him “off the battlefield” within the U.S. warfare with Al Qaeda.
Mr. Hawsawi is accused of serving to among the hijackers with funds and journey preparations from the United Arab Emirates on behalf of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 plot. The two males had been captured collectively on March 1, 2003, in a raid on a home in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
“Make no mistake about it,” Colonel Bearden mentioned. “The conflict is still going on. Hostilities still exist.”
Sean M. Gleason, a lawyer for Mr. Hawsawi, a Saudi nationwide, argued that his consumer was in pretrial detention from the second of his seize as a result of the United States had already issued an arrest warrant for him and ready a secret indictment in opposition to him. By that measure, he mentioned, the prisoner was to date entitled to 253 months of sentencing credit score.
Mr. Hawsawi’s legal professionals wrote of their temporary that though “the death penalty lurks as a potential sentence,” that ought to not forestall the decide from granting reduction “that would open the door to a different sentence.”
His legal professionals have individually requested the decide to dismiss the case due to Mr. Hawsawi’s torture in U.S. custody.
Defense legal professionals for the suspects raised the problem as a pretrial matter, arguing that navy commissions defendants ought to be entitled to sentencing credit score similar to different U.S. navy or legal defendants.
In 2010, the Pentagon added a rule to the Manual for Military Commissions particularly stripping warfare crimes judges of the correct to award such credit score. But Mr. Gleason argued that Congress by no means included that provision within the numerous legal guidelines that created navy commissions, and so his proper to credit score was primarily retroactive.
The decide, Col. Matthew N. McCall, didn’t ask questions on Wednesday concerning the overarching preventive detention doctrine. But he requested why one “criminal process” shouldn’t be “run like any other criminal process.”
“They are law of war detainees forever, until the hostilities have ceased,” Colonel Bearden replied.
James G. Connell III, representing one other defendant, Ammar al-Baluchi, has equally sought sentencing credit score. Mr. Connell argued {that a} defendant, particularly when he considers whether or not to plead responsible to a criminal offense, ought to understand how a lot credit score he would obtain for time served.
Mr. Connell additionally disputed the prosecutor’s characterization of Mr. Baluchi as a “law of war detainee” in his first years within the C.I.A.’s secret abroad jail community, often called black websites. Prisoners held beneath the regulation of warfare are entitled to visits from delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross, he mentioned. The Sept. 11 suspects had been captured in 2002 and 2003 however weren’t allowed to fulfill Red Cross representatives till October 2006, a month after their switch to Guantánamo Bay.
Of the 30 detainees at Guantánamo Bay, 11 have been tried or convicted; 16 have been authorised for switch to different international locations, with safety preparations; and three are indefinite detainees with out cost or trial being held beneath that doctrine as prisoners of the ceaselessly warfare in opposition to terrorism.
