9/11 suspects ask to confess in Gitmo court

By Alan Gomez

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — Five men charged with plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks asked a judge Monday to halt their proceedings in their war crimes tribunal so they could immediately confess and enter guilty pleas.

The pleas were delayed but could result in death penalties for the men. Their action apparently was not the result of repentance for the terrorist mass murder of nearly 3,000 Americans in New York, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I reaffirm my allegiance to Osama bin Laden," said Ramzi Binalshibh at the close of the hearing. "May God protect him … and we ask him to attack the American enemy with all his power."

Relatives of victims of the attacks in 2001 were in attendance for the first time, and the defendants' announcement stunned them. Some expressed their support of the military commission and their anger over the defendant's indifference over the rights given them.

"They seemed to view these proceedings as a joke," said Hamilton Peterson of Bethesda, Md., whose parents, Donald and Jean, were on United Flight 93. "They were clearly intellectually grasping all of the painstaking efforts of due process that our country is giving them and … made the comment, 'I don't want to waste our time.' ....