在9/11恐怖袭击20周年纪念日的几个小时前，针对五名被指控的指挥者的案件预审程序于周五开始和结束，他们都没有出现在本周最后一次公开庭审的法庭上——而多个辩护团队对法官继续主持军事委员会提出了正式反对意见。
自称是袭击主谋的哈立德·谢赫·穆罕默德，在本周二和周三的公开庭审中一直在场，甚至利用这一难得的机会走出拘留室，在法庭的公众席上向记者挥手致意。但是，他和他的同案被告星期五在世界承认星期六的庄严纪念活动之前，跳过了委员会的最后公开部分，这让记者感到惊讶。
一名助理法官辩护律师(化名“帕”)证实他们不在，并提供签名，承认他们“自愿”决定不出席。阿里·阿卜杜勒·阿齐兹·阿里(又名阿玛尔·巴鲁奇)的辩护律师詹姆斯·康奈尔(James Connell)试图让军方证人表明身份，但政府反对，坚称证词应该匿名进行，并且符合军事委员会的规定，不违反第六修正案。
康奈尔的投诉与其说是为了确认记录中的这位特定证人，不如说是为了表达他对政府使用匿名证人的持续反对。这种互动不仅说明了审前程序的繁琐性，几乎每一项行动都需要深思熟虑，还揭示了本案的另一个不同寻常的方面:除非被告确实出席了听证会，否则被告无法接触自己的委托人——即使在法庭开庭时也是如此。
助理参谋法官辩护律师作证说，9/11的一名被告Ammar al-Baluchi很困，选择打盹，而不是参加周五的公开会议。没有对其他四名被告缺席做出任何解释，尽管康奈尔能够提取出另一名被拘留的吉卜赛人阿卜杜勒·哈迪·伊克病情恶化的细节，他在另一起案件中被指控，但与9/11事件的一些被告共用公共生活区。
伊拉克人现在声称他瘫痪了，失去了双腿的功能，因此在被拘留者拒绝一名女医务兵的帮助后，俾路支显然在过去几个晚上一直在帮助他。(他的律师说，她最初的提议是一次侵入性的检查，因为伊拉克人拒绝了治疗。助理法官辩护律师驳回了伊拉克人瘫痪的说法。
主持诉讼的马特·麦考尔上校提出改变时间表，让被告有更多的时间在周五早上睡觉，并在下午参加今天的诉讼，但辩护律师最终拒绝了这一通融——而不是面对共同被告被拖出牢房并被迫亲自出庭的前景。
在本周详细讨论了法官的资格后，穆罕默德的律师加里·索沃兹(Gary Sowards)宣布，他将寻求取消麦考尔的法官资格，这让法庭上的许多人感到惊讶，他表示，鉴于麦考尔在最初被指派后被免职的“法外”性质，对法官的公正性存在合理的质疑。(索沃德辩称，这一决定是在没有经过适当诉讼的情况下，按照五角大楼的要求做出的。)
第二位首席律师并不支持将麦考尔从该案中除名，而是认为他需要更多的时间来阅读手头的案件和死刑法律。
“你不熟悉记录，”辩护律师谢丽尔·鲍曼告诉法官。“你不熟悉适用于死刑案件的法律。作为审判法庭的法官，你需要自发地对反对意见做出裁决。”
第三位首席律师附和了索沃德和鲍曼的观点。康奈尔宣称他不反对麦考尔，也不会寻求取消他的资格。决赛队伍暂时延期了。
麦考尔表示，他将考虑这些论点，并根据自己的立场做出决定。
随后，团队开始就发现问题展开辩论，这是本案中最具争议的问题之一。辩护小组支持一项动议，要求政府交出中央情报局关押KSM和其他被拘留者的黑色地点的更详细的证据。在指出政府对800多次审讯进行了有限的评估后，辩方进一步要求政府保密。
与此同时，康奈尔在会后还向记者透露，他现在可以分享检方扣留了与联邦调查局审讯者有关的证据，该审讯者是所谓的“干净团队”的一部分，在被拘留者到达关塔那摩后对他们进行审讯，并提供了中央情报局的“黑色现场”计划，对被拘留者2008年的证词进行了新的审查，政府预计将在很大程度上以这些证词为基础。
他们认为，这种缓慢的信息泄露和缺乏透明度给每个辩护团队都造成了巨大的障碍。“我们不知道我们不知道的事情，”拉姆奇·本·希布的律师之一科里·克尔赞在法官面前说。
经过大约三个半小时的公开开庭后，法庭休庭吃午饭并进行秘密开庭。程序的公开部分将于周一恢复。
20 years later, legal case against accused 9/11 mastermind grinds on
Hours before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, pretrial proceedings in the case against the five accused orchestrators started and ended on Friday with none of them present in the courtroom for the final public session of the week – while multiple defense teams raised formal objections against the judge continuing to preside over the military commission.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, had been present during public sessions of the proceedings on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, even taking the rare moment out of his detention cell to wave at reporters in the public gallery in the courtroom. But he and his co-defendants surprised reporters Friday by skipping the final public portion of the commission before the world recognizes the solemn commemoration on Saturday.
An assistant staff judge advocate, identified only by a pseudonym "Pa," testified to their absence and provided signatures acknowledging their "voluntary" decision not to attend. James Connell, defense counsel for Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, aka Ammar al-Baluchi, attempted to have the military witness identify himself, but the government objected, insisting the testimony should proceed anonymously and was within the regulations of the military commission and not a violation of the Sixth Amendment.
Connell’s complaint was less about identifying this particular witness on the record, and more about expressing his continuing objection to the government’s use of unnamed witnesses. The interaction illustrated not only the tedious nature of the pretrial proceedings where nearly every action warrants deliberation, but it also revealed another unusual aspect of this case: the defense does not have access to their own clients -- even when the court is in session – unless the accused actually attend the hearings.
The assistant staff judge advocate testified that one 9/11 defendant, Ammar al-Baluchi was sleepy and chose to nap rather than attend Friday's public session. No explanation was given for the absence of the other four defendants, though Connell was able to extract details that the condition worsened of another Gitmo detainee, Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi – who is charged in another case but shares communal living quarters with some of the 9/11 defendants.
Al-Iraqi now claims that he is paralyzed and has lost the function of his legs, so al-Baluchi apparently aided him throughout the past several nights after the detainees rejected the assistance of a female corpsman. (His lawyers say that her initial offer was an invasive exam as the reason al-Iraqi waved off care.) The assistant staff judge advocate rejected the claim that Al-Iraqi is paralyzed.
Col. Matt McCall, presiding over the proceedings, offered to make a change to the schedule to allow the defendants more time to sleep Friday morning and attend today's proceedings in the afternoon, but the defense counsel ultimately refused the accommodation – rather than face the prospect that the codefendants would be dragged out of their cells and forced to attend in person.
After discussing the judge’s qualifications at length this week, Mohammed's lawyer Gary Sowards surprised many in the courtroom by announcing he would seek to disqualify McCall from sitting on the bench, saying there is a reasonable question about the judge’s impartiality, given the "extra-judicial" nature of McCall's removal from the case after he was initially assigned. (Sowards argues the decision was made without appropriate litigation and at the behest of the Pentagon.)
A second chief counsel argued not for McCall’s removal from the case, but that he needed more time to read in on the case at hand and capital law.
"You're not familiar with the record," defense counsel Cheryl T. Bormann told the judge. "You are not familiar with the law as it applies to capital cases. Being a judge in a trial courtroom requires you to rule spontaneously on objections."
A third lead attorney echoed both Sowards and Bormann. Connell declared he had no objections with McCall and would not seek to disqualify him. The final team deferred for now.
McCall said he would consider the arguments and render a decision on his own position.
The teams then moved into arguing over discovery, one of the most contentious issues in this case. The defense teams argued in favor of a motion demanding the government turn over more detailed evidence from the CIA black sites where KSM and the other detainees were held. After pointing out that the government provided limited assessments of more than 800 interrogation sessions, the defense further pressed the government's secrecy.
In step with this line of questioning, Connell also revealed to reporters after the session that he could now share that the prosecution had withheld evidence linking an FBI interrogator that was part of the so-called “clean team” that questioning the detainees after they arrived at Guantanamo and the CIA black site program, providing fresh scrutiny surrounding the 2008 testimony from the detainees that the government is expect to build much of its case upon.
This slow drip of information and lack of transparency creates a significant hurdle for each defense team, they argue. "We don't know what we don't know," Corey Krzan, one of Ramzi bin al-Shibh’s lawyers, said before the judge.
After about three and a half hours of public session, the court recessed for lunch and a classified session. The public portion of the proceedings will resume on Monday.
