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9/11 families excluded from
Guantanamo hearing
Jane Sutton
Reuters
Thursday, June 5, 2008
As the Guantanamo war crimes court prepared to arraign five prisoners
on death penalty charges of orchestrating the September 11 attacks,
a Pentagon official apologized on Wednesday for excluding victims'
families from the hearing.
The U.S. military quietly invited one woman whose brother was
an American Airlines pilot killed in the plane that crashed into
the Pentagon in the 2001 attacks.
But the invitation to attend Thursday's arraignment at the Guantanamo
Bay naval base in Cuba was rescinded when the New York Daily News
revealed that lone invitee Debra Burlingame was an ardent defender
of President George W. Bush who spoke in support of his administration
at the Republican Party convention during his 2004 re-election
campaign.
Relatives of other victims complained that the Guantanamo trials
were being politicized and the Pentagon's legal adviser, Brig.
Gen. Thomas Hartmann, acknowledged the matter was mishandled.
(Article continues below)
"Out of good intentions, one of them was invited. It shouldn't
have been done that way, it should have been done more comprehensively,
more completely, more thoroughly," Hartmann told dozens of
journalists who were flown to Guantanamo to observe Thursday's
hearing.
"In the future, we will have a lottery system to make sure
the victim families have equal access, equal opportunity to come,
to visit, to see the hearings, any parts of the hearings that
they like ... and we will be consistent in our practices from
now on."
Accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four
other prisoners -- Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa
Ahmed al-Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash -- are to appear before
a judge at the remote naval base for the first time on charges
of conspiring with al Qaeda to murder civilians.
Full
article here.
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