USA: TRIAL FOR MEN CHARGED WITH PLOTTING SEPT. 11 ATTACKS IS SET FOR 2021

September 2, 2019:

A military judge on Friday set Jan. 11, 2021, as the start of the joint death-penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four men charged as plotters of the attacks that killed 2,976 people in New York, Washington and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ammar al-Baluchi, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi are held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and will finally go to trial in 2021, almost 20 years after the devastating attack on the United States involving hijacked airliners. They are accused of planning and participating in the plot - allegedly hatched by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden - to hijack four airliners and crash them into New York City's World Trade Center and buildings in Washington, DC. 2 of the planes struck the World Trade Center's twin towers, another hit the Pentagon, and a 4th crashed into a field in Pennsylvania killing nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. The judge, Col. W. Shane Cohen of the Air Force, set the date for the start of the selection of a military jury at the war court compound at the Navy base in Cuba called Camp Justice. It was included in a 10-page trial scheduling order that set deadlines toward reaching that trial date. The timetable includes a list of materials the prosecutors must provide the defense teams by Oct. 1 as the first step to achieving that start date. This is the first time that a trial judge in the case actually set a start-of-trial date, despite requests by prosecutors since 2012 to two earlier judges to do so. The five will be the first to go on trial in the "military commissions" established to handle the "war on terror" detainees captured and sent to Guantanamo after September 11. The five were formally charged in 2012 with conspiracy, attacking civilians, murder in violation of the law of war, aircraft hijacking and terrorism.