The presiding judge decided to suspend the preliminary hearings after being informed of a confirmed case among journalists who covered the hearings last week.
Another interruption. The trial of alleged Sept. 11 perpetrator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other defendants was suspended on Friday, Sept. 17, due to a Covid-19 warning at the military court at the US naval base at Guantanamo, in Cuba.
According to a court official, the presiding judge decided to suspend preliminary hearings after being informed of a confirmed case of Covid among journalists who covered the hearings last week. A second person who attended the hearings developed symptoms, but the case was not confirmed.
Friday’s hearing should have been the last, after two weeks of preliminary meetings led by the new judge in charge of the trial. Colonel Matthew McCall said he decided to see “movement” after nine years of hearings, interrupted for 18 months due to the pandemic.
As remembered by Huffington Post, the announcement of the initial accusations of terrorism and of the murder of 2,976 people was held in February 2008. But it was only on May 5, 2012 that the first hearing was held and, since then, dozens of others have been held, all preliminary.
Military courts are demanding that prosecution and defense lawyers, judges and clerks travel to Guantanamo, but a courtroom linked to the US base by video has just opened near Washington to allow remote hearings.