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- Sep 14, 2004
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If guilty, few will have done more to deserve execution:
Pentagon Seeks Death Penalty for Alleged 9/11 Planner
complete article: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1162388220080212?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Monday charged the alleged planner of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and five others with murder and conspiracy and asked that they be executed if convicted.
The charges are the first from the Guantanamo war court alleging direct involvement in the 2001 attacks on the United States and the first involving the death penalty.
Mohammed, a Pakistani national better known as KSM, has said he planned every aspect of the September 11 attacks.
But his confession could be problematic if used as evidence because the CIA has admitted it subjected him to "waterboarding" -- an interrogation technique of simulated drowning that has been widely criticized as torture.
The rules of the court on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prohibit the use of evidence gained through torture, as does an international treaty the United States has signed.
But Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, a legal adviser at the Guantanamo prison camp, would not rule out the use of evidence gathered during the CIA interrogation of Mohammed.
"The question of what evidence will be admitted, whether (involving) waterboarding or otherwise, will be decided in the court," he said.