New Delay in 9/11 Trial at Gitmo

A military judge agreed Monday to another delay in the war crimes trial of five Guantanamo prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Army Col. Stephen Henley agreed to the U.S. government's request for a 60-day continuance, a delay intended to give President Barack Obama's administration enough time to decide whether it should move the case to a civilian court or a revamped war crimes tribunal.

Henley had scheduled a hearing at the U.S. base in Cuba to allow Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants — all three of whom are serving as their own lawyers — to voice any objections to the Obama administration's third continuance in their case.

But Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, and the other defendants sent a note to the judge saying they did not oppose the delay, and Henley granted a written order without a hearing.

Mohammed was still expected to address the court later on a series of legal motions from the three defendants, including a request to dismiss lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union assigned to help with their case.

The two other Sept. 11 defendants have not yet been ruled mentally competent to act as their own lawyers and were expected to be excluded from the hearing.

The chief prosecutor, Navy Capt. John F. Murphy, said a decision on where to try Mohammed and four others charged in the Sept. 11 attacks will be made by Nov. 16. Even if the case remains in the hands of the military it would have to be moved from Guantanamo if President Obama keeps his pledge to close the detention center at the U.S. base in Cuba in January.

The U.S. holds about 225 prisoners at Guantanamo. Murphy said about 65 are "viable" cases for prosecution.

Military prosecutors are ready to try the cases, but four U.S. attorneys offices in New York and the Washington, D.C. area are reviewing the files for possible federal civilian trials, he said.

Mohammed has made nine appearances before the war crimes court. He has proudly proclaimed his role in the attacks and called for the dismissal of the lawyers appointed by the court to assist with his defense.

Mohammed, captured by U.S. authorities in Pakistan in 2003, has said he wants to be executed by the United States to achieve martyrdom.

Declassified 2004 CIA documents, released Aug. 24 by the Obama administration, detailed some of the treatment that Mohammed and other terrorism suspects underwent as part of a harsh regime of interrogation.

Among other things, interrogators told him that "if anything else happens in the United States, 'We're going to kill your children,'" and continuously poured large volumes of water on a cloth covering his mouth — the practice known as waterboarding.

Previous documents revealed that he was waterboarded 183 times.

Meanwhile, a new scientific paper says that the hard interrogation tactics used on CIA detainees (including Mohammed) likely damaged the brain and memory functions of terrorist suspects, .

In the paper published Monday in the scientific journal, "Trends in Cognitive Science: Science and Society," author Shane O'Mara, a professor at Ireland's Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, wrote that high-stress techniques such as waterboarding, extreme pain, prolonged sleep deprivation and exploiting prisoner's phobias could lead to brain lobe disorders, making
the prisoners vulnerable to confabulation - the pathological production of false memories based on suggestions from an interrogator. Those false memories mix with true information in the interrogation, making it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fabricated.

The paper also asserted that forcibly exposing prisoners to what they are afraid of - the CIA got approval to use a suspect's fear of insects against him - is actually a method used to cure phobias.

Swiss Consider Taking Gitmo Detainees

The Swiss Justice Ministry said officials visited the U.S. detention centre at Guantanamo Bay last month to gather information on inmates the Alpine country is considering taking in when they are released.

Ministry spokesman Guido Balmer on Sunday declined to confirm a report in the Zurich weekly Sonntags Zeitung that the four inmates in question were two Chinese Muslims (or Uighurs), an Uzbek national and a Palestinian.

Switzerland is among a number of European countries — including Ireland, Portugal, France and Germany — that have indicated they might be willing to take in released prisoners who are unable to return to their homeland for fear of persecution.