ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION
The arraignment of five Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks got off to a chaotic start on Saturday (May 5) when all the defendants defiantly refused to answer the judge's questions and one made outbursts in court.
Star defendant Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the September 11 hijacked plane attacks, refused to respond to the judge's questions about whether he was satisfied with his U.S. military and civilian lawyers.
Mohammed, a 47-year-old Pakistani, looked haggard and his full, scraggly beard had a reddish tinge. He wore a round white turban and white tunic.
Defense lawyers answered routine questions about their resumes with complaints that the proceedings were unfair and that the defendants had been abused. The judge struggled to keep the proceedings in the death penalty case on track.
The military tribunal hearing on charges that include murdering 2,976 people marked the first time Mohammed and his four co-defendants had been seen in public in about three years.
They are accused of conspiring with Osama bin Laden, murder in violation of the laws of war, hijacking, terrorism and other charges stemming from the 2001 hijacked plane attacks that propelled the United States into a deadly, costly and ongoing global war against al Qaeda and its supporters.
A previous attempt to prosecute them in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal was halted when the Obama administration tried unsuccessfully to move the case into a New York federal court.
It started anew on Saturday in a disorderly hearing in the top-security courtroom at the remote Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba.
The defendants refused to listen through earphones to English-Arabic translations of the judge's questions. The judge recessed the hearing and then resumed it with an interpreter providing a translation that was broadcast over a loudspeaker into the court, sometimes drowning out the conversation between the lawyers and the judge.
