Why the mastermind of 9/11 is yet to face trial

0:00What you're about to listen to is our daily news podcast, but it is not all the TDA makes TDA sport TDA finance TDA culture and the good newsletter Four free newsletters five minutes each on the one thing you actually want more of the links to sign up to all of them are in the show notes Ready and good morning This is the daily of oh now it makes sense Good morning and welcome to the daily Oz it's Friday the 11th of September I'm Sam Kuzlowski. I'm Lucy Tassel. Last month after Decades of hearings and appeals the man accused of planning the September 11 terrorist attacks got a trial date And that's set for June 20th Two days later the same judge who set that date said his confession can't be used at the trial

1:00ruling it was a product of torture the report says within minutes of his arrival he was subjected to quote Enhanced interrogation techniques techniques that have been heavily criticized as torture as I've said before I think constituted torture in my mind and that's not who we are on today's podcast on the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks We're going to explain why the case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has never made it to a jury and we're seeing stand today Sam before we get into the case as you said today is the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attack yeah now I Don't remember 9-11 so how old would you have been four? I had just turned five just turned five and my parents I wasn't school yet and my parents told me later they very much shielded me right Knowing anything about it, but I know you remember It's kind of my first memory ever Which is odd because I was six and I think you meant to have memories a bit before then

2:01But it was obviously so impactful I used to get up really early and watch ABC kids television Like 5 a.m. Yeah, and on this morning I got up and I sat in front of the television and my parents only woke up about an hour later And I'd been watching wall-to-wall coverage because they had thrown out obviously children's television that day Yeah And I just remember it so clearly I remember getting to school and the teacher drawing Towers on the whiteboard and explaining to us what it happened But an impactful memory and there's a lot being talked about on this 25th anniversary about generation 9-11 and people around you know around the our age who have grown up in a post 9-11 world. Yeah, and 25 years on It's still a very dominant news event. Yeah, so just quickly covering it off So 2,977 people were killed including 10 Australians When two planes flew into the world trade center of those who died at the world trade center Nearly 1100 people have still not been identified so the families have never had the remains returned to them

3:02And it is worth noting as well. You see that the toll is still growing So more than 145,000 people are enrolled in the world trade center health program And that's for responders and survivors who are exposed to dust and the aftermath of More than 57,000 cancer diagnoses have been certified as a linked to 9-11 And the New York Fire Department alone says that more than 600 of its own people have died of 9-11 related illnesses A remarkable figure. Yeah, I remember a couple of years ago at TDA We covered when the New York Fire Department confirmed it had now lost as many people to 9-11 related diseases as it did on the day Yeah, remarkable. That number has still continued to grow. Yeah So now 25 years later Talk to me about who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is and what he's accused of So in the years after 9-11 the US government put together this official inquiry called the 9-11 commission report

4:03And according to that report Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will call him KSM He is the principal architect of the 9-11 attacks. That's how the commission describes him So he's a Kuwaiti-born man. He was from a family originally from Pakistan He studied in the US and got a mechanical engineering degree from North Carolina in 1986 And he's essentially accused of proposing the original plot to Osama bin Laden Yeah in the early to mid 90s Then he's accused of helping train and actually relocate the hijackers He was captured in Pakistan in March of 2003 And he was charged alongside four co-defendants and Iran in 2012 Now since 2012 nothing has been proven in court because there's never actually been a trial Yes, so that's a big long gap between capture and Arraignment and then another huge gap between that moment and the trial

5:04So what's been happening since then? So it's been 23 years and so for about three and a half of those years He was in a secret CIA prison or multiple CIA prisons. Yeah, they're known as black sites And we don't actually know exactly where he was through that time Then from September of 2006 he was at Guantanamo Bay Which is the US naval base in Cuba where the US houses a lot of people like KSM yeah around 780 people have been Held at Guantanamo since 2002 and as of January of 2025 15 remained yeah hard to know exactly how many people are even there today now the important thing about this whole trial process Is that he's not being tried in the ordinary American court and justice system. Yeah, he's actually appearing before a military commission Which is an entirely separate court system which is built specifically for non-US citizen terrorism suspects After 9-11 so there's different evidence to a normal court and most of the rules that

6:08govern that court haven't actually really been tested before Yeah, so then how does the system actually work? Well, there's only been eight convictions in this system by the Guantanamo military commission six of those have come from plea deals So there hasn't actually been a trial. It's just been kind of a negotiation between the two sides And three have been overturned completely So there's no 9-11 related contested trial we can look at so there's no trial on 9-11 that's how to prosecution on one side and then defense on the other And actually had an argument over evidence and an argument over sentencing It's never run to a conclusion. Yeah, and to put that into perspective the ordinary US court system has handled more than a thousand terrorism convictions since 9-11 So it's not that the US justice system overall isn't prosecuting and sentencing terrorist Suspects. Yeah, it's just that this particular military court hasn't really shown that it can Conduct a full trial all the way

7:09So why is that like what is the reason is there one reason why this just still hasn't actually come to anything yet? Well, I you can imagine the people working on this case probably the Undoubtedly one of the biggest cases in modern US history But the single biggest reason when not a trial yet is torture So a landmark 2014 US Senate Intelligence Committee report kind of broke this Seal on what happens at these CIA black sites and Guantanamo based specifically when somebody is in CIA custody And last month the judge in KSM's case listed over 183 instances of practices that were used on KSM Including waterboarding prolonged sleep deprivation and explicit threats to murder KSM's child Yeah, if you've seen you know zero duck 30 or any of those sort of Modern wartime movies that detail the torture methods

8:11That's the kind of vision I have in my mind when thinking about that kind of stuff. Yeah And the CIA at the time was calling it enhanced interrogation techniques They thought it would or they hoped it would kind of bring out the truth faster and when you hear testimony from people who were A part of those decisions they were kind of saying we didn't know if there were going to be multiple planes landing across America And yes, there was this ongoing war when needed to do whatever it took at the time to get the information we needed and so in 2007 KSM Yeah, it was moved to Guantanamo the FBI interviewed him again And that's known as a clean team So the idea is kind of insulating those Questioners from any of the CIA enhanced interrogation tactics. Yeah, so that that confession from the FBI could be kind of free Of being tarnished by the CIA's methods. Yeah, but obviously it had happened after that So there was really no way for that team to actually be clean in that sense

9:12That's exactly the problem that's emerged now. So prosecutors relied on those statements as this kind of clean evidence away from torture environments. Yeah And whether they can use them the confession of yes, I planned 9-11 In a trial has been the fight for more than a decade. Yeah Now I remember I think the last time we talked about 9-11 on this podcast it was because those potentially going to be a plea deal Yeah, so that was July of 2024. We've been doing this quite a while together So KSM and two co-defendants they signed a plea deal. Yeah, they pled guilty to all charges in exchange for getting life in prison But not the death penalty. Yeah, and then two days after that the then defense secretary Lloyd Austin through them out And there are powers that a defense secretary has to throw out plea deals doesn't use them very often But in this case he said and these are his words that families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out

10:13In other words, this is a case so important that it should be resolved by an actual trial not a plea deal Now a military judge said that the defense secretary in this case can't actually reverse it in 2024 Then in a pill court said I know he can in December of 2024 And then July last year Another court ruled that the defense secretary had actually acted unlawfully And a trial was back on the table. Okay, so that chaos gives you a sense of how Much this is flip flop just in the last two years. Yeah, and We think now that it actually is going to go to trial. Mm-hmm. So then where does that leave us This week So this week we now have a trial date. Okay, and that date is the 5th of June 2028 wow and That's the first time in a couple of years that we've had a date. Yeah, that looks like it's actually gonna happen And the reason why we think this is actually gonna happen is the prosecutors Have said they're not gonna appeal But they're not gonna try and push for that plea deal to come back on the table

11:16Because they recognize the delays and they want this now to Almost just kind of come to fruition at some point But what's gonna be really interesting about that decision from prosecutors is it means they can't use KSM's confession that he gave to the FBI at all That's not gonna be valid evidence in that trial. Yeah, so they'll have to have different Evidence. Yeah, they're gonna have to prove it in different ways But you can imagine as a prosecutor the strongest evidence that you could possibly have is the person on the other side saying Yes, I did in fact do that But the judge essentially is ruled here that those 2007 interviews with the FBI They did not represent a genuine break from his past treatment by the CIA. Yeah, so exactly what you were saying before Lucy like The court has said there wasn't enough difference in the time to not Cloud his confession with those torture methods. Yeah, I mean, it's just it's just a different branch of the same kind of Organization. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but uh, you know ultimately the use of those torture methods has meant that the key confession is no longer valid. Yeah

12:25What other families of the victim saying about all of this? I find this really interesting because They're genuinely split. Yeah, and there are families who backed that plea deal and They have I mean, there's one who's firefighter father died her name's Elizabeth Miller She's described the last couple of years as emotional whiplash Completely understandable with the flip flopping I described earlier now on the other side Terry Strada He's from the 9-11 families united organization He said that it feels like a betrayal to take a plea deal and that he wants to see this be in court So there's no kind of unanimous sentiment from the families at all. Yeah Now this isn't just an American story, which I think it's probably important that we kind of remind ourselves of how this impacted Australia as well Yeah, definitely so I mentioned before the 10 Australians who died in 9-11 Yeah, but that was also the time that the then prime minister John Howard invoked the answer

13:26This treaty with the US for the first time. Yeah, it led to Australia's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq About 35,000 Australian personnel served in Afghanistan over 20 years and 41 personnel died. Yeah, so This is a US event that clearly had global implications I'm reminded of it the most when I'm going through security at airports Yeah, you know, you see movies where it's showing how people used to go through airports and you know The shoes off full body scans and everything a lot of that is attributed to 9-11 Yeah, definitely and I mean also in terms of these things having a really long Tale we've got obviously this trial not happening until June 2028 You mentioned Australia in Afghanistan. We're still dealing with the ramifications of what may or may not allegedly have been done Yes, Ben Robert Smith like that is a director as old like these things have such Yeah, when you say the 9-11 generation. That's just what it makes me think of like there's just so so so many

14:27Ripples out from this one day 100 percent. I mean it is non-nundestatement to say that it was a day that completely changed the course of history Yeah, and today's yeah 25 years. Yeah, so we're gonna see a huge ceremony at the memorial in New York It starts at 8.30 a.m. in the morning local time. So it's tonight our time And the first moment of silence will be at 8.46, which is when the first plane hit yeah Family members will read the names of those that died and that's gonna take hours because of the death toll there Now President Trump is expected at the Pentagon, which was another target on 9-11 rather than New York JD Vance the vice president will be at the New York ceremony and he'll be joined by all for living past presidents Well, but as you said to even 25 years on were still two years away at least From the trial of the man who was accused of planning at all well. Thank you for explaining that Sam and now I think you have a tip bit for me I do so I've kept a White House themed um, but it's a slightly different take okay on the news of the day

15:34So the White House I don't know if you've noticed Lucy you might might have noticed after being a little bit online But it tends to release the odd meme slash arcade game Hmm Okay game I haven't seen me might have it released a Maga themed game called build the wall Where users could play a Tetris style game where they could build a wall that is meant to resemble the wall on the southern border Do they know that Tetris was an invention of the Soviet Union? They wouldn't have known that I don't think It was released last week It was alongside other games that mirrored snake and flappy bird not flappy But what's happened since is that Tetris have actually come out and said that they take copyright infringement very seriously Okay, amazing and the statement says are Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together Not dividing them to our fans everywhere we love you We see you and we're grateful to have you in our community

16:35We take copyright infringement very seriously amazing the White House has taken the game down wow Okay, so Tetris strikes back the mighty force of Tetris they landed with a one big long block and they clean away They nailed the groove they absolutely nailed it I think you can still play the other games, but maybe there'll be other Threats of copyright to come yeah, well, I mean flappy bird the guy the inventor closed it down He didn't like wow interesting got upset with what he had created got out of control producer all Or is not in a meeting I do remember this Yeah, and just so you know on that game the White House version players control a bold eagle to keep the bill of rights in the air while flying through monuments That's awesome that's awesome incredible. Well, thank you for that. Thanks Lucy and thank you for joining us on today's deep dive We'll be back this afternoon with the headlines until then have a great Friday My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Aranda bunge long calcadune woman from Gadigal country

17:38The daily odds acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries both past and present Just before you go you've just heard today's TDA podcast But here's the bit that we don't do in your headphones. There's four TDA sport TDA finance TDA culture and the good newsletter Four free newsletters five minutes each that go deep on the one thing you'd actually want a bit more of whether that's the footy Your investments whatever. I'm talking about in the group chat or just a Sunday morning read that makes you feel good about The world there's no jargon no long articles just more of the TDA reporting you love Pick whichever ones yours or it might be all four the links to all of them are in today's show notes