9/11 suspects ask to make confessions

[unhappycamper]

9/11 suspects ask to make confessions
By Andrew O. Selsky - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Dec 9, 2008 6:32:45 EST

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks say they want to enter guilty pleas, apparently challenging the U.S. government to sentence them to death before President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

The Guantanamo detainees said they decided on Nov. 4 — the day Obama was elected — to abandon their defenses in their death-penalty trials. Obama opposes the military war-crimes trials and has pledged to close Guantanamo’s detention center, which holds some 250 men.

Mohammed said Monday he will confess to masterminding the attacks that killed 2,975 people. The four other defendants did the same, in effect daring the Pentagon to give them death sentences.

The judge ordered lawyers to advise him by Jan. 4 whether the Pentagon can apply the death penalty — which military prosecutors are seeking — without a jury trial.

Mohammed, who has already told a military panel he was the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, said he has no faith in the judge, his Pentagon-appointed lawyers or President George W. Bush.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/12/ap_guantanamo_confess_120808/%2e