With Zacarias Moussaoui closer to being condemned to death for aiding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, victims’ families are demanding that the confessed masterminds in U.S. custody also go to court, says the New York Daily News. Where does the prosecution stand toward Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and [Whalid Ba] Attash?” asked Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband, Ron, died at the World Trade Center. “All of them had more of a direct connection to 9/11 and are in our custody. There’s no reason not to prosecute them.”
The Justice Department had no comment, but current and former senior U.S. officials told the Daily News that Mohammed, the self-professed 9/11 “military commander,” and his lieutenants Binalshibh and Attash will probably never face a judge and jury. The White House decided not to prosecute top Al Qaeda officials nabbed by the CIA in federal courts, agreeing instead to extract intelligence from them about any other terror plots, sources said. “The decision was made right off the bat that they’d never see the inside of a civilian court,” a former senior Justice Department official said. “They decided we were going to get a lot more out of these guys if we put them in a black hole.”
Link: http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/406177p-343870c.html