The five men charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks are in a hurry to enter guilty pleas in their apparent quest for martyrdom, with only six weeks remaining before US president-elect Barack Obama takes office.
The war-crimes detainees said they decided on Nov. 4 — the day Obama was elected — to abandon their defenses against the capital charges. Obama opposes the military trials and has pledged to close Guantanamo's detention center, which holds some 250 men.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on Monday told a military judge he would confess to masterminding the attacks that killed 2,975 people, shocking victims' relatives who watched from behind a glass partition.
Four other men also abandoned their defenses, in effect daring the Pentagon to grant their wish for martyrdom.
The judge ordered lawyers to advise him by Jan. 4 whether the Pentagon could apply the death penalty — which military prosecutors are seeking — without a jury trial.
“They were proud to be guilty and that says a lot about them,” said Maureen Santora of Long Island City, New York, whose firefighter son Christopher died responding to the World Trade Center attacks.
At a press conference after the hearing, her husband Alexander held up photos of firefighters, his eyes brimming with tears.
“I know my son is with us,” he said.
He wore a New York Fire Department cap.
The Santoras were among nine victims' relatives who watched the proceedings, the first time family members have been allowed to observe the trials. Maureen Santora watched from the back of the courtroom, wearing black and clutching a photo of her son in uniform.
Alice Hoagland of Redwood Estates, California, whose son Mark Bingham was on United Flight 93 whose passengers fought hijackers before it crashed in rural Pennsylvania, said the defendants should not be executed and become martyrs.
“They do not deserve the glory of executions,” Hoagland said.
“I want these dreadful people to live out their lives in a US prison ... under the control of people they profess to hate,” she said.
Early in the day's dramatic turns of events, the five men announced they were abandoning their attempts to mount a vigorous defense, marking an about-face that appeared to take the court by complete surprise. They requested “an immediate hearing session to announce our confessions.” However, that didn't mean they had repented.
“I reaffirm my allegiance to Osama bin Laden,” Ramzi Binalshibh blurted out in Arabic at the end of the hearing. “I hope the jihad continues and I hope it hits the heart of America with weapons of mass destruction.”
Hamilton Peterson of Bethesda, Maryland, whose father and stepmother died on United 93, said the defendants showed a “complete lack of contrition” and deserved to be executed.
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