The Ten Strangest Things About the 9/11 Arraignment

May 6, 2012
Posted by Amy Davidson

“Why is this so hard?” Colonel James Pohl, the judge presiding over the military prosecution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants, said at their arraignment yesterday. At that point, it was already well into the hearing, which would careen on for more than thirteen hours, including breaks for lunch and prayer and shouting. The actual arraignment began about nine hours in; the defendants deferred entering a plea, and the next hearing was set for June 12th. The prosecutors read the eighty-seven-page charge sheet in shifts.

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10. The Leg: Walid bin Attash, who is accused of training the hijackers, was brought into court in a restraint chair by three guards. As Michelle Shephard, of the Toronto Star, describes it, “A fourth guard brought in his prosthetic leg separately about a minute later.”

9. The Beard: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was last seen with a salt-and-pepper beard. Saturday, he had a red beard. During a break, a Navy spokesman, Captain Robert Durand, told Carol Rosenberg, of the Miami Herald, that the prison “does not provide detainees with hair dye.”

8. “Bite-sized chunks”: The defendants wouldn’t put their earphones in for the simultaneous translation. The court brought in interpreters who would just repeat the proceedings in Arabic for everyone to hear. This got noisy, confusing, and long, with overlapping talk. After some trial and error, Pohl instructed the lawyers to speak in “bite-sized chunks.” The interpreters ended up interpreting complaints about the quality of their interpretation.

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