Guantanamo Navy Base: New Military Judge who led 10 September Colonel Air Force Matthew McCall told the military commission court at the US Naval Base in Cuba, that he would not stop the lawyer defend 9/11 “architect” Khalid Sheikh Muhamad and four others from Make their case because they were rejected by CIA.
Speaking only three days before the 20-year anniversary of Al-Qaeda’s attack, he said he wanted to move through a long-term preternal phase of the death penalty case that had passed seven judges.
“This case has occurred at a very long time,” he told the lawyer, the defendant, and family members of the 9/11 victims in the courtroom.
“I don’t feel the pressure to get this case to be tried,” he said, amidst the concern of political interference defense.
However, he said, “I want to see the action,” to move everything in front.
The second day of the audience after a 18-month break because the Covid-19 pandemic focuses on the review of the potential bias judge.
Gary Sowards, one of the lawyers Mohammed, pressed McCall on his personal reaction to the September 11, 2001 attack, his experience reviewed detention in Iraq, and his views on the problems surrounding the high security trial.
“This is a political trial,” Sowards said, said that the government had used its strength to cover the CIA torture from five men in the secret of “black sites” before they arrived at Guantanamo in 2006.
“The effect of torture is always in the room,” he said .
“Their big trump cards are national security and state secrets,” he said about the military prosecutor.
Mohammed and alleged co-conspirator Ammar al-Baluchi, Walid bin Atlash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, all of which were in the courtroom for the second day, accused of doing terrorism and mass murder in the attack of 2,976 people in the attack.
– ‘Valid Choice’ – Defense lawyer challenges McCall for his view of Islam after he read him reading books by Middle East historian Bernard Lewis before he was deployed to Iraq in the early 2000s.
Lewis, who wrote about “clashes of civilization,” became controversial because it encouraged the administration of George W.
Bush to attack Iraq in the hope of resetting the historical and community roads in the Arab world.
McCall said he did not have the same view.
“I don’t think you can see Islam as a big block,” he said.
All religions have their moderate and extremists, he added.
“I tried to read various news sources,” he insisted, added to consider himself “open minded.” He said as a military lawyer he had worked in Iraq in the 2000s reviewed detention cases before being placed into the Iraqi justice system.
Mostly guilty there is nothing serious and deserves to be released, he said.
But he said he was not responsible for some Iraqi to death, and others who remained although there was no evidence of them.
He mentioned the death penalty “valid option” in the 9/11 case.
He added that, given the number of prisoners of death which had been proven innocent in the United States, the execution sentence demanded “higher standards” of evidence.
McCall approached hearing Wednesday in the afternoon, scheduled Thursday for a personal conference, and planned to complete its own qualifying review on Friday.
He plans to change the court for substantive problems next week.
Defense has revived a number of movements to get secret evidence that supports their arguments that the prosecution case is polluted by the eternal effect of torture.
This case has occurred at a very long time, likes to see action: a new 9/11 trial judge
