Over at the Corner, Andy McCarthy points to this Politico story about a recent order by a D.C. District Court giving Gitmo detainee Abdul Raheem Ghulam Rabbani the right to ask 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) some questions about Rabbani’s role in al Qaeda. The details of how these questions will be posed to KSM are unclear, but apparently Rabbani’s lawyers will be allowed to submit a list of written queries. Who is Abdul Raheem Ghulam Rabbani? Both he and his brother are notorious al Qaeda safehouse operators who worked for KSM and other senior al Qaeda operatives.
The 9/11 Commission noted in its final report that after the muscle hijackers were trained in Afghanistan — training that included how to storm a cockpit and the butchering of a “sheep and a camel with a knife to prepare to use knives during the hijackings” — they made their way to the Rabbani brothers’ safehouse in Karachi, Pakistan.
A memo prepared for one of Abdul Raheem’s administrative review boards (ARB) at a Gitmo hearing states that he “identified seventeen of the September 11, 2001 hijackers who stayed at” the Karachi safehouse. Abdul Raheem was also able to identify “five of the suspects indicted in the 1998 bombings of United States Embassies” in Kenya and Tanzania as “men he had seen in Afghanistan” or “men he had assisted” in Karachi. The Rabbani brothers were not just responsible for hosting al Qaeda hijackers and embassy bombers en route to their martyrdom. Both were first allegedly trained at Abu Zubaydah’s Khalden training camp in Afghanistan and then went on to long al Qaeda careers. In 2002, Abdul Raheem was allegedly “part of a cell that was tasked to purchase cars, conduct casing of hotels, and purchase and build explosives devices to be used in car bomb attacks against United States troops.”
Mohammed, the younger of the two, was part of this same al Qaeda cell. A memo prepared for one of Mohammed’s ARB hearings at Gitmo notes: “The car bomb attack would target hotels in Karachi, Pakistan, where large numbers of United States troops were housed on a regular basis.”
The Rabbani brothers were captured during a series of raids in Pakistan in September 2002. During those same raids, “authorities recovered detonating devices from” one of their safe houses. A memo prepared for Abdul Raheem’s case at Gitmo notes:
In fact, both of the Rabbani brothers are alleged to have longstanding ties to bin Laden. Mohammed reportedly told authorities that “he helped with the move of” Osama bin Laden and bin Laden’s family “to the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan” in July 2001. Of course, bin Laden and al Qaeda were preparing for the September 11 attacks and the possibility of America’s retaliation at that time. Thus, al Qaeda set up a fallback zone in the Tora Bora Mountains. Mohammed “stated he assisted by obtaining food and construction material to fortify Tora Bora cave complexes.” Mohammed also reportedly gave up this tidbit while in U.S. custody (see here):
While the 10-1 ratio given by Mohammed was probably bluster, he was right about the part concerning al Qaeda’s attempts to use American citizens in post-9/11 attacks. Jose Padilla is just one example of an American citizen who was captured (just a few months prior to Mohammed’s capture) while plotting for al Qaeda. There are plenty of examples of American and Western citizens and residents recruited by al Qaeda for post-9/11 operations. Their status as Westernized men was supposed to make it easier for them to execute an attack in the heightened security environment. It would be interesting to find out if Mohammed or his brother knew of, and alerted authorities to, any additional American or European citizens who were similarly situated.
Now a judge has decided that Abdul Raheem has the right to ask KSM, via his lawyers, some questions about his terrorist biography. As McCarthy notes, this same judge (and others like him) have no “responsibility or expertise in national security matters.” Imagine if we had left our defense in the months following September 11 to him and his ilk by giving every detainee taken into custody speedy access to the courts.
