The murmur is cut off with a slam of the door. Suddenly, the silence is deafening and the room stands up to receive the judge and Colonel Matthew McCall; the defense and prosecution spokespersons introduce the members of their team; the magistrate recalls the rules and announces the motions introduced by both parties; the four accused confirm in Arabic that they have understood the process: "na'am".
Everything seems very normal: it is the usual procedure at the beginning of any military trial in the United States. If it weren't for the fact that Colonel McCall is the eighth judge to preside over the case since it began in 2012; because with this, 50 endless pretrial hearings are completed, which may never lead to a trial; because the rights of defense and accusation are absurdly unbalanced; and because the accused – alleged planners of the 9/11 attacks – show clear signs of torture and aging.
The intense air conditioning reminds you that you are in the United States. But the humid tropical heat outside is more typical of the Caribbean. The five insignia behind the judge – Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard and Department of Defense – clarify any doubt: you are in a US military installation, specifically in court number 2 of the Guantanamo base in Cuba. This week number 3 is released, which has cost the US government 4 million dollars and which pursues the objective of expediting the six judicial processes that are still open in the bay.
The main defendant in the case is the Pakistani Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, self-declared mastermind of the attack on the Twin Towers, who also participated in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and was in command of the al-Qaeda propaganda apparatus. He sits in the front row, to the left of the judge, along with his legal team, and does not seem to care too much about the opening of the umpteenth hearing.
Behind him are the Saudi Walid bin Attash, accused of training two of the 19 hijackers in the handling of airplanes; the Pakistani Ammar al-Baluchi, Mohammed's nephew and his right-hand man in planning the attacks, for which he allegedly financed the plane tickets and managed the hotel reservations; and the last row is the place designated for the terrorist with the fewest charges against him, Mustafa al Hawsawi, who would have helped finance the attacks.
The latter has entered limping and his lawyers have provided him with a cushion to sit on, as he suffers from rectal pain due to the rapes that his lawyers allege he suffered as part of his torture. Halfway through the session, he waives his right to be present and leaves the room. Until September last year, there was a fifth defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, but his case was separated from the rest after the judge declared him "mentally incapable" to face the death penalty, as a result of brain damage caused by years of abuse.
In the middle of the session, a woman who lost her husband in the attacks stands up and approaches the glass that separates the court from the room where journalists, victims and observers are located. For twenty seconds, which will remain engraved in her memory, she carefully observes the four defendants and returns with her head down and with teary eyes to her designated spot.
They all wear traditional robes from Pakistan, where they were captured by the US between 2002 and 2003. They were then held in secret CIA prisons until 2006, subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques" - which In the rest of the world it is known as torture – authorized by the George Bush administration after the attacks. That year, after the signing of the Military Commissions Law (the legal framework that governs this process), they were transferred to the Guantanamo naval base. Here they remained detained without any charges against them until 2012, the year in which the government finally accused them of eight war crimes, which if convicted will carry the death penalty.
The defense and prosecution have spent the last 12 years litigating over the evidence that the government can provide to the lawyers of the alleged terrorists, since much of it is based on the confessions made during torture in CIA prisons and in Guantánamo. The defense alleges that these self-incriminations were conditioned to satisfy the torturers, so they are not valid evidence.
Furthermore, the transcript of said torture, and documents related to it, remain classified, and the only way for the defense to access them is with the approval of the government, which in many cases writes them in collaboration with the CIA.
Lawyer Alka Pradhan, who is handling al-Baluchi's case, denounces during the recess the "clear and unfair imbalance between the rights of the defense and the prosecution." Along the same lines, Walter Ruiz, al Hawsawi's lawyer, assures that, if the process had taken place in a federal court, "the judge would have had much less patience with the way in which the government is distributing that information" essential for his defending.
When classified information is discussed during a hearing, the judge activates an alarm and, in the adjoining room – where the sound arrives with a 40-second delay as a precaution – observers stop listening to the session. This week, the prosecution has called to testify FBI intelligence supervisor Kimberly Waltz, who witnessed several interrogation sessions with prisoners in Guantánamo in 2007, in which she declared that there was no torture, but that the sessions were "cordial." " and the declarations, "voluntary." Since much of the lawyers' questions have to do with classified information, Judge McCall has scheduled two more sessions closed to the public.
The lawyers denounce that these dynamics generate a lack of transparency and harm their defense in such a high-level trial. Furthermore, "the idea of creating special military courts to try civilians is a major threat to freedom," says James Connell, al-Baluchi's lawyer. In Guantanamo, "it is very difficult to have consistent communications with our client," adds Ruiz, whose client has been repeatedly tortured since his arrival at the prison in 2006 and "now suffers another type of abuse, in the form of continued detention without trial." ".
All these obstacles have caused the pre-trial phase to continue without major progress after 50 hearings, and the sources consulted by La Vanguardia agree that the trial is still far away, despite the fact that the judge dated it for the first time for January 11, 2021. When it arrives, it will be a military jury that will be in charge of reaching a verdict, which will possibly carry the death penalty. Meanwhile, the relatives of the nearly 3,000 victims of 9/11 continue to demand effective justice and reparation.
