Gitmo Lawyers Link Trials to Elections

Gitmo Lawyers Link Trials to Elections
May 30, 2008
Knight Ridder

Defense lawyers for the alleged 9/11 conspirators have accused the Pentagon prosecutor of rushing to begin the complex Sept. 11, 2001, mass-murder trial in the height of the presidential campaign season.

The U.S. military attorneys included the claim May 29 in a 20-page brief asking the military judge to dismiss the capital charges against alleged al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other Guantanamo detainees.

The document includes an e-mail from a civilian member of the prosecution team proposing to set the trial date for Sept. 15, the Monday after the seventh anniversary of the suicide attacks.

"Not coincidentally," the defense attorneys say, "that would force the trial of this case in mid-September, some seven weeks before the general elections."

The date, in fact, is 10 days after Sen. John McCain, an architect of Military Commissions law, is expected to be officially nominated as the Republican presidential candidate at the GOP national convention in St. Paul, Minn.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/gitmo-lawyers-link-trials-to-elections.html