On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, pretrial hearings in the nine-year-long case against five men accused of plotting and executing the attacks continued in a heavily guarded military courtroom in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
While the hearings this week were the first to be held in-person for a year and a half because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the case that aims to provide family members of the nearly 3,000 victims of September 11 with justice remains hamstrung by personnel changes and dozens of outstanding motions.
The five accused, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- who has been dubbed the mastermind behind the attacks, have been detained and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since 2006. He was later reappointed by the military to the case in August, after he had acquired two years of experience as a judge. Both prosecuting attorneys representing the US government and defense attorneys representing the detainees questioned McCall about his experience and background knowledge of issues in the case.
McCall said he did not have experience working on a case involving torture but said he did have experience working with clients who had experienced trauma because he worked on many military sexual assault cases. David Bruck, who recently became the lead defense attorney for detainee Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, accurately summed up the two paths McCall's career could take if he remains the presiding judge for the case.
"When you are hanging from the ceiling for days on end... you don't know what's happened," Cheryl Bormann, lead counsel for Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin 'Attash, said in court, referring to torture he was subjected to when he was in CIA custody.
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