Let's Go to Guantanamo! An On-the-Ground Perspective on the 9/11 Trial

In this talk, I focus on the military commission trial for Khaled Sheikh Muhammad and four other men accused of responsibility for the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, a case often referred to as "the trial of the century." The presentation offers a first-hand perspective on what it is like to go to Guantanamo, and an analysis of the critical and contentious issues that this case raises. The government is striving to pursue accountability for the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, but justice is complicated by the fact that all five defendants were held for years in secret prisons and tortured by the CIA, and everything surrounding this case is shrouded in secrecy, which severely impedes the legal process. I thus discuss how the military commission system is struggling to contend with these complicated issues in a multi-defendant death penalty case.