US President Barack Obama, defending plans to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court, predicted on Wednesday that the accused author of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks would be convicted, and executed.
US Attorney General Eric Holder assured lawmakers that prosecutors know “failure is not an option” and that Sheikh Mohammed would not be freed even if acquitted by a jury in New York, a city still scarred by the 2001 attacks.
Obama, speaking to NBC television during a trip to Asia, said that anger and security worries over the planned civilian trial would fall away “when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.”
In a separate exchange with CNN, Obama, who insisted he was not prejudging the case, scoffed at the idea “that these terrorists possess some special powers that prevent us from presenting evidence against them, locking them up and exacting swift justice.”
The US president also explicitly acknowledged for the first time that he will not meet the Jan. 22 deadline he decreed on his second day in office for closing the prison at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“I’m not disappointed. I knew this was going to be hard,” he told Fox News, adding that he expected a continued political fight over the prison.
“We are on a path and a process where I would anticipate that Guantanamo will be closed next year. I’m not going to set an exact date, because a lot of this was also going to depend on cooperation from Congress,” he said.
Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he hoped the administration hoped to overcome “the biggest problem” by finding destinations this year for detainees cleared for release.
After Obama’s deadline admission, rights group Amnesty International urged Washington to “redouble efforts” to shutter Guantanamo.
“Now, as should have been the case from day one, the government should resolve these detentions by either bringing the detainees to fair trial or immediately releasing them,” said Susan Lee, head of Amnesty’s Americas program.
With angry relatives of some Sept. 11 victims looking on, Holder defended his decision to try Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-plotters in New York.
“Failure is not an option. These are cases that have to be won. I don’t expect that we will have a contrary result,” Holder said. “We need not cower in the face of this enemy.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition