Obama U-turn: US to try 9/11 accused at Guantanamo

In a major about-face, the Obama administration said on Monday that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators will be tried by a military tribunal at Guantanamo rather than a civilian court in New York. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the U-turn, saying that the accused 9/11 plotters could have been successfully prosecuted in a federal court, but blamed Congress for approving restrictions blocking trials of Guantanamo inmates in the United States.
"So today I am referring the cases of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Bin Attash, Ramzi Bin Al Shibh, Ali Abdul-Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Al Hawsawi to the Department of Defence to proceed in military commissions," he said. Holder said that President Barack Obama's administration had to "face a simple truth" that the congressional restrictions against trials in the United States were "unlikely to be repealed in the immediate future."
"And we simply cannot allow a trial to be delayed any longer for the victims of the 9/11 attacks or for their family members who have waited for nearly a decade for justice," he said. Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo, having held it up as a symbol of all that was wrong with the so-called "war on terror" waged by his predecessor George W. Bush. The move, which was sure to disappoint some of Obama's left-leaning supporters, came the same day the president announced plans to stand for re-election next year.
It also followed a decision earlier Monday by the US Supreme Court to reject three appeals by Guantanamo detainees protesting their indefinite detention. The inmates had argued that their detentions violated international law and that the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence against them.
No date has been set yet for the high-profile trials of Sheikh Mohammed and the four other alleged al Qaeda figures, but the decision to try them at the US naval base in south-eastern Cuba provided the latest evidence the detention center will stay open for some time. In one of his first acts as president in 2009, Obama halted trials at Guantanamo and announced he would close the controversial detention camp within a year. But he has been thwarted in his ambition by legal complications and strong opposition from both friends and foes in Congress.