The highest ranking al Qaeda terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, have all been designated enemy combatants by review panels.
That paves the way for Air Force Col. Morris Davis of the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commission to file criminal charges. Davis, the chief prosecutor, will likely charge some or all the 14 “high value” detainees with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy and material support for terrorists, said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Defense Department spokesman.
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The detainees will face trial by a military commission “for alleged law of war violates,” Gordon told The Examiner on Thursday.
The suspects appeared earlier this year before Combatant Status Review Tribunals under a new military commissions law passed by Congress in 2006. The panels deemed them all enemy combatants and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England approved.
It was during his status review hearing that Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessed to planning the 9/11 attack in which 19 al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airliners and drove them into New York’s twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania in a flight aborted by a passenger revolt.
“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” he said.
Mohammed also admitted to killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” said Mohammed, according to a Pentagon transcript.
The 14 enemy combatants also include a man known as Hambali, once the al Qaeda leader in Asia; Abu Faraj al-Libi, al Qaeda’s general manager; and Abu Zubaydah, who headed al Qaeda smuggling operations.
A 15th al Qaeda figure, Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, isthe most recently captured high-value suspect and has not yet undergone a status review. The CIA captured al-Iraqi in late 2006 as he was attempting to enter Iraq. U.S. officials say al-Iraqi was a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative who relayed messages from Osama bin Laden to terrorists in Iraq.
The designations announced Thursday by the Pentagon comes as the military continues to decrease Guantanamo’s prison population.
Six more prisoners have been released to their home countries, bringing the facility’s population down to 355 from a high of over 700 after the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Of the 355, there are 80 inmates deemed eligible for release if their country of residence will take them back and agree to some type of restrictions.
