Security tight for 9/11 trial
NEW YORK – Hot sauce and a comb were all an al-Qaida suspect in New York needed to nearly kill one of his guards nine years ago. The bloody episode suggests that security worries in bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects to trial here could be just as big inside the courthouse as outside.
Already, the U.S. marshals are promising the highest security possible – an acknowledgement of how dangerous terrorism suspects have been.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 2001 attacks, and four accused henchmen – Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Waleed bin Attash, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Ramzi Binalshibh – would be brought from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to New York to face a civilian federal trial.
The prosecution is planned for a court complex just blocks from where the World Trade Center towers were destroyed in the attack blamed on these men. The courthouse is among the most secure in the nation, ringed by closed-off streets, 24-hour guard posts, anti-truck-bomb barricades and street video cameras so powerful that they can read the print off a passerby’s newspaper.
Holder’s decision to try the Sept. 11 suspects sparked debate over the security risks, but far less has been said about attempted violence by the defendants themselves.
At the same federal lock-up where Mohammed and the others are to be held, federal prison guard Louis Pepe was attacked in late 2000 by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a former top aide to bin Laden who was awaiting trial in the embassies case.
Salim surprised Pepe by using a squeezable plastic honey bear container filled with hot sauce as a homemade pepper spray that temporarily blinded the guard.
The inmate then took a plastic comb and plunged it into Pepe’s left eye. The point pierced deep into his brain, causing severe permanent injury to his sight, speech, and movement.
After the attack, prosecutors say papers found in the cell showed Salim’s plan had been to take hostages inside the prison and free his co-defendants. While such a “breakout” plot might sound far-fetched given the security of the federal buildings, in Salim’s case the very attempt nearly killed someone.
