US NAVAL BASE At GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA, July 17:
A preliminary hearing for five men accused in the 9/11 attacks has been postponed for 10 days due to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, one of their lawyers said.
The hearing, already postponed once, follows one on May 5, which saw confessed 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and four other men formally charged with crimes including murder and terrorism over the 2001 attacks.
The hearing in a military tribunal at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has now been scheduled for August 22-26, pushed back from August 8-12. Ramadan ends on August 18.
The five face the death penalty if convicted for their roles in the terror attacks by al-Qaeda militants in which hijacked planes were used to strike New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing 2,976 people.
“The request for rescheduling was supported by all five co-defendants and opposed by the prosecution,” the lawyer defending Mohammed’s Pakistani nephew Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, James Connell, said in a release.
On May 5, when the defendants were formally charged, the men disrupted the proceedings by reading what looked to be the Koran, keeping their eyes fixed on the ground, or kneeling to pray. (Agencies)
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