9/11: The Defense Claims the FBI Tried To Spy on Them

The lawyers of the five people accused of perpetrating 9/11 have accused the American federal police of trying to obtain information from one of them before a military tribunal in Guantanamo on Monday.

This new controversy on the surveillance of the defense is the subject of an emergency complaint filed Sunday night by the five teams, and has entailed the halting of the public debate and the hearing until Tuesday morning.

On the first day of a week of preliminary hearings, broadcast from the military base at Fort Meade near Washington, Jim Harrington, lawyer of Yemenite Ramzi bin al-Shibh, described “the terrifying experience” his team went through in the beginning of April when two FBI agents, according to him, contacted one of his members to turn him into an “confidential informant.”

“A member of our team was contacted by two FBI agents” to inform them about the five defense teams and had to sign an agreement binding him to silence, denounced Jim Harrington.

“The court must conduct an independent investigation,” he pleaded in front of Judge James Pohl.*

The five defense teams have successively denounced a “conflict of interest,” which occurs after a series of controversies revolving around surveillance and records of conversations between lawyers and defendants in the courtroom, and via hidden recording devices in smoke detectors in the room where they meet.

“If someone works for the FBI from inside a defense team (…) this violates privileged relationships and the confidentiality of our work,” pleaded Walter Ruiz, the lawyer for Mustafa al-Hasawi.*

Interrogated by the judge, military prosecutor Mark Martins said he was not aware of an FBI visit, and asked the hearing to proceed “methodically.”

“The fact that these alleged acts happened a week ago, does that mean we have to wait two months to talk about it?” asked Judge James Pohl, before halting public debate for the day and ordering a closed hearing in the afternoon.*

This week, which was meant to prepare for the trial that should not have started before 2015, should have initially begun by examining the criminal responsibility of Mr. bin al-Shibh, who was expelled from a hearing in December because of his untimely remarks about the noises he hears at night in Guantanamo’s ultra-secret Camp 7, which he compared to torture.

Dressed in traditional clothes or camouflage jackets, the five persons accused of [the attacks of] Sept. 11, for which the Pakistani Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the self-proclaimed brain behind the operation, were content to acquiesce when the judge reminded them of their right to be absent from the hearing. They face the death penalty for the murder of nearly 3,000 people in the U.S.

* Editor’s Note: This quote, accurately translated, could not be verified.