Sept. 11 suspects at Guantanamo deny coercion

By Jim Loney

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Two accused Sept. 11 plotters told a U.S. military war crimes court on Wednesday they had not been bullied by suspected al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and one said the allegation resulted from the misunderstanding of a joke.

Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi made their second appearances before the court at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They were questioned about whether Mohammed coerced them into refusing lawyers and defending themselves in trials that could bring death sentences.

Hawsawi's military lawyer, Army Maj. Jon Jackson, had complained that Mohammed bullied Hawsawi into abandoning his intent to accept a military lawyer at his first hearing on June 5, when five alleged September 11 conspirators appeared together.

He quoted Mohammed as telling Hawsawi, "What are you, in the American Army now?"

The military judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, set up hearings this week to allow the five accused to appear separately so he could ask them whether they were intimidated or coerced by any of their co-defendants.

Kohlmann explained the meaning of the word intimidate to both men and asked a series of questions about whether they were threatened, ordered or influenced. Both said no.

Ali, who is Mohammed's nephew, said the allegation resulted from a misunderstanding. He said Mohammed was joking with Hawsawi about his clothes and suggested the Western translators did not understand the defendants' culture or humor.

"He said, 'What are you in the American Navy now, just joking with him," Ali said.

"Nobody is in such a position to give me an order," he said, calling himself a free human being, "not a slave."

After the hearing, Jackson, Hawsawi's lawyer, dismissed the notion the intimidation was just a jest, saying he still believed his client was pressured.

"My perception has not changed at all," he told reporters.

The issue of legal representation has slowed the cases before the Guantanamo tribunals, the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War Two, which have been widely criticized by human rights groups.

Hawsawi, Mohammed, Ali and two others, Ramzi Binalshibh and Walid bin Attash, are charged with conspiring with al Qaeda to kill civilians in the September 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks on the United States, which launched the Bush administration's global war on terrorism.

They face 2,973 counts of murder, one for each person killed when the passenger planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

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