Military trial for 9/11 mastermind

THE US said yesterday it would try self-professed September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-conspirators in a military commission at Guantanamo Bay and not in a US civil court as President Barack Obama had hoped.

US Attorney General Eric Holder told a news conference the decision was necessary because Congress had imposed “unwise and unwarranted restrictions” that blocked the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the US.

His announcement was an embarrassing reversal of the administration’s decision in November 2009 to try Mohammed in a court near the site of the World Trade Center attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.