By IANS
New York : The US will seek death sentences for six people who are to be charged for their key roles in the 9/11 terror attacks, the New York Times reported Monday.
The charges would be announced at the Pentagon as soon as Monday and were likely to include numerous war-crimes charges against the six men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The former Al Qaeda operations chief has confessed to his role as the mastermind of the attacks on the twin towers of World Trade Centre, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York.
The other five to be charged include coordinators and intermediaries in the plot, among them a man labelled the “20th hijacker”, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was denied entry to the US in the month before the attacks.
A defence department official told the paper that prosecutors were seeking the death penalty because “if any case warrants it, it would be for individuals who were parties to a crime of that scale”.
A decision to seek the death penalty would increase the international focus on the case and present new challenges to the troubled military commission system that has yet to begin a single trial.
Some officials briefed on the case have said the prosecutors view their task in seeking convictions for the Sep 11 attacks as a historic challenge. A special group of military and justice department lawyers has been working on the case for several years.
Even if the detainees are convicted on capital charges, any execution would be many months or, perhaps years, from being carried out, lawyers said, in part because a death sentence would have to be scrutinised by civilian appeals courts, the paper said.