Excerpt
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Defense lawyers accused the government of rushing the Sept. 11 defendants to trial at Guantanamo to influence the U.S. presidential elections, and asked the military judge to dismiss the case in a court filing obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
The filing also shows that the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, who resigned in October over alleged political interference, was sanctioned by the military on May 23 after testifying for the defense in a Guantanamo hearing.
The former prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, wrote that the action will discourage any other military members from providing information about the controversial war-crimes tribunals. The tribunals' legal adviser, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, told the AP Davis was sanctioned because of poor job performance and not because he testified.
Military lawyers for alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants revealed that prosecutors are seeking a Sept. 15 trial date — weeks before the Nov. 4 election.
The five men accused of mounting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed almost 3,000 people are to be arraigned June 5 at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — the most high-profile of the military commissions, as the war-crimes proceedings are called.
"It is safe to say that there are senior officials in the military commission process who believe that there would be strategic political value to having these five men sitting in a death chamber on Nov. 4, 2008," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, a defense attorney.
If you have the goods on the defendents, why be afraid to lay your case out in the US Courts rather than hiding behind some sham military tribunal. There are still a lot of people in the US and around the world that still do not beleive the official 9/11 story and these bogus trials are not going to change their minds.
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