Exactly who the hell is asking these people for their opinion on this anyway?
The Miami Herald is reporting that September 11th mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammad, and four other defendants, would like to postpone their August hearing at Guantanamo because it falls toward the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The trial judge, Army Col. James Pohl, set the date for the hearing in May and specifically ruled out an extension on grounds that it coincided with Islam’s fasting month. He noted in his order then that no defense lawyer at that point had raised objection to a hearing that coincided with Ramadan.
But the attorneys do just that in a June 21 filing currently under seal on the Pentagon’s war court website entitled “Joint Defense Motion for the Military Commission to Respect the Religious Observances of Enemy Prisoners under Common Article 3.”
Pohl is hearing motions in another Guantánamo case next week. But that hearing ends by July 19, before Ramadan starts. The 9/11 case pre-trial motions would be heard toward the end of Ramadan.
“The last 10 days of Ramadan commemorate the night God —Allah— revealed the Holy Quran to the Prophet Mohammed,” said James Connell III, the Pentagon-paid defense counsel for Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al Baluchi. “These 10 days are the most holy period of the Muslim calendar and are typically observed by fasting, prayer, and seclusion.”
Pamela Geller writes:
Let me get this straight. We are supposed to postpone the 911 tribunals out of respect and deference to the very ideology that inspired the mass murderous Islamic attacks of 9/11. Someone pinch me. This is a nightmare.
Ramadan is exactly when these jihadist savages should be put on trial and sentenced to death.
I’ll go one step further. Their deaths should be televised live on Pay-Per-View, with the proceeds going to the victims families … it should be televised on the first day of Ramadan, and rerun every day until the end of Ramadan.