9/11 judge and prosecutors should step down over 'destroyed evidence', defense demands
Source: The Guardian
9/11 judge and prosecutors should step down over 'destroyed evidence', defense demands
Move throws case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into chaos
as defense team says fatally flawed Guantánamo military tribunal
should be ended
Spencer Ackerman in New York
Wednesday 11 May 2016 23.43 BST
An explosive allegation about destroyed evidence threatens to unravel the already shaky military tribunal for the alleged architect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Attorneys for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are calling on the judge and the entire prosecution team in Mohammeds military commission at Guantánamo Bay to step down from the long-running case over what a member of the defense team called at least the appearance of collusion that led to the government apparently secretly destroying information relevant to the premier post-9/11 tribunal.
The defense team further argues that the destruction of evidence ought to spell the end of Mohammeds military trial entirely, a development that would leave the Obama administration and its successor to come up with an entirely new plan for what to do with the top terror suspect in US custody.
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The details of what happened are not known because the unclassified legal filing is not yet publicly available. The specific allegations were filed yesterday before the commission, but the filing must clear a routine security review that all such legal documents before the commission undergo.
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Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/11/911-khalid-sheikh-mohammed-trial-alleged-destroyed-evidence