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#6612106 at 2019-05-28 23:16:11 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #8454: Baker Hoppin' Melee Continues Edition

>>6612061
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/us/politics/christian-reismeier-guantanamo-military-court.html
http://archive.is/p72E8
Former Navy Judge Named to Oversee Guantánamo Military Court (NYT)
By Carol Rosenberg
May 28, 2019

This article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
WASHINGTON - A retired Navy judge has been named to oversee the military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, filling a job that has lacked a permanent occupant since his predecessor was dismissed last year after discussing plea deals with defense lawyers in the Sept. 11 and the destroyer Cole cases.
The acting secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan, appointed the retired judge, Christian L. Reismeier, to the civilian job - officially known as the convening authority for military commissions - last week and the Pentagon announced the decision on Tuesday. Mr. Reismeier, who retired as a one-star admiral in 2015, was spotted last week at Military Commissions headquarters in Alexandria, Va.
The job includes negotiating plea deals with defense lawyers, approving proposed cases, deciding whether prosecutors can seek the death penalty and funding trial and defense teams. The job's responsibilities have been carried out since early last year on an interim basis by two lower-level officials.
Mr. Reismeier is taking over more than 15 years after the Pentagon named the first overseer of a tribunal system at Guantánamo Bay - set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - with no major Qaeda prosecution yet carried out.
The military commission's most complex case - against five men accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed 2,976 people - still has no trial date seven years after an Obama administration convening authority approved proceeding with the prosecution.
Progress has been scant in part because the judge and lawyers are still hashing out what classified information the defense lawyers, accused terrorists and public can see at the court. The defendants had spent years in the C.I.A.'s secret overseas prison network before being moved to Guantánamo Bay.
The military judge presiding in the trial has announced that he intends to leave the case next month. Last month, the commander of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Rear Adm. John C. Ring, was fired after a monthlong investigation and for what his superior officer called a "loss of confidence" in his ability to lead.
Mr. Reismeier's predecessor as the convening authority, Harvey Rishikof, and his legal adviser had been discussing whether to seek life imprisonment rather than death sentences in exchange for guilty pleas by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, accused of being the Sept. 11 mastermind, and his four co-defendants in a bid to bring a swifter resolution. They were fired by the defense secretary at the time, Jim Mattis, on Feb. 5, 2018.
Mr. Mattis said in an affidavit that he dismissed Mr. Rishikof, whom he appointed at the start of the Trump administration but never met, because of his temperament and failure to coordinate properly with other divisions in the Defense Department.
Mr. Rishikof and his legal adviser, Gary Brown, said in a joint affidavit that they had not been warned in advance that senior Pentagon officials were unhappy with their performances but were aware that they had made some unpopular and controversial decisions, including discussing guilty pleas in the two capital cases in exchange for life in prison rather than execution.
Two issues that could engage Mr. Reismeier early include the scheduled November retirement of the chief prosecutor for military commissions, Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, and whether to approve a case the general wants brought to trial against three Guantánamo prisoners for suspected links to two deadly terrorist bombings in Indonesia in 2002 and 2003.
The spokesman for the Office of Military Commissions, Ron Flesvig, was unable to say whether, in his capacity of overseer of the war court, Mr. Reismeier could have a say on whether General Martins would be extended in the role. He has held the job since June 2011.

#2756236 at 2018-08-27 19:01:20 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #3481: POTUS's Challenge Coins Edition

New roadblock to 9/11 trial? Sept. 11 judge retiring, names Marine successor


In another likely setback to progress toward a trial, the long-serving Army judge in the Sept. 11 case on Monday announced he will retire on Sept. 30 and assigned a Marine colonel who has been a military judge for three years to replace him, effective immediately.

In his notice filed at the Office of Military Commissions, Army Col. James L. Pohl said he has chosen to "leave active duty after 38 years. To be clear, this was my decision and not impacted by any outside influence from any source."

Pohl assigned Marine Col. Keith A. Parrella, 44, a military judge who currently handles court-martial cases at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to replace him.

Accused mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other alleged accomplices are accused of conspiring with the hijackers who killed 2,976 people on Sept. 11, 2001, and could face military execution if they are convicted.

But it's been six years since the suspects were arraigned. The Guantánamo case still has no trial date as Pohl and now Parrella sift through pretrial motions at the court President George W. Bush created after the 9/11 attacks. To catch up, Parrella will need to read six years of motions, more than 20,000 page of pretrial transcripts and a classified record whose size is not known.

Parrella's assignment marks a transition to a new generation of post 9/11 military judges handling Guantánamo's two long-running death-penalty cases.

Earlier this month, Pohl assigned Air Force Col. Shelly Schools to preside in the long-running trial of a Saudi man accused of plotting al-Qaida's suicide bombing of the USS Cole warship. Alleged Cole plotter Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who was captured in 2002, is in his seventh year of pretrial hearings. that are now stalled while a Pentagon appeals panel resolves key questions about a war court judge's authority at a military commission.

Schools became a military judge in July 2014. Parrella took the course to become a judge in April 2015. Both had joined service by the time of the 9/11 attacks.

Pohl, 67, leaves at a consequential time. It will be up to Parrella to decide whether to overturn one of Pohl's most significant rulings in the case: His Aug. 17 order to exclude 2006 and 2007 interrogations by the FBI of the alleged conspirators, most conducted soon after their transfer from secret CIA prisons to the U.S. military base in Cuba.

In a filing just last week, prosecutors said Pohl had excluded some of the strongest evidence in the conspiracy case - FBI agents' descriptions of the men ostensibly confessing to their roles in the 9/11 conspiracy. Pohl ruled that prosecution and spy agency prohibitions on defense teams questioning former CIA black site workers put the defense attorneys at an unfair disadvantage.

A key question confronting the case is whether Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis' decision Feb. 5 to fire the overseer of military commissions, Convening Authority Harvey Rishikof, at a time when Rishikof was exploring plea deals, constituted unlawful influence. A plea deal would have removed the death penalty from the trial.

Aside from the henna-bearded Mohammed, who sits at Table One in the five-defendant courtroom, Pohl has been a looming, consistent presence in the war court case that has gone through fits and spurts - and has approved all the substitutes and redactions of secret evidence in the case and read, if not ruled on, hundreds of pretrial motions.

Pohl had scheduled the next 9/11 pretrial hearing for Sept. 10-14. With the reassignment, it will be up to Parrella to decide whether to keep that date.

Pohl has presided at the 9/11 trial since the May 2012 arraignment. He has served as the chief judge for military commissions, the authority for assigning other judges to cases. With his resignation, Mattis or someone he designates will have to pick Pohl's successor as the chief judge for military commissions.

Parrella's appointment did not come as a complete surprise in U.S. Marine circles. While presiding in a court-martial case at Camp Lejeune on Aug. 3, according to those who were present, Parrella announced in open court that he was going to be detailed to a Guantánamo military commissions case with the initials "KSM." KSM is the initials of the lead defendant, Mohammed, as well as the shorthand for how legal briefs are labeled on the war court website.

#2294405 at 2018-07-26 09:33:35 (UTC+1)
Q Research #2891 Night of the Living Bread Edition

>>2294400
Sessions, Mattis accused of meddling in 9/11 case after AG objected to plea deal, fearing loss of death penalty option


Why did Trump appoint Jeff Sessions as AG?
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions allegedly objected last year to exploratory talks about a plea deal in the 9/11 case, fearing that could take the death penalty off the table for the alleged terrorists currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Defense attorneys made the allegation to the Miami Herald on Monday, saying Sessions called Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to voice his objections concerning a possible plea deal, raising concerns that the two Trump administration officials have meddled in the trial.

The attorneys now urge a military judge to order both Mattis and Sessions testify at the war court on the question of unlawful influence in the case.

U.S. Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis addresses a news conference during a NATO defence ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir - RC11E611BC10
New allegations stem from a decision by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, pictured, to fire the overseer of military commissions, Harvey Rishikof, which coincided with Rishikof's secret exploration of the possibility of guilty pleas to resolve the trial of alleged 9/11 plot mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four alleged accomplices. (Reuters)

The allegations stem from Mattis' decision to fire the overseer of military commissions, Harvey Rishikof, which coincided with Rishikof's secret exploration of the possibility of guilty pleas to resolve the trial of alleged 9/11 plot mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four others who allegedly worked with Al-Qaeda as accomplices to commit the Sept. 11, 2001, atrocities in which nearly 3,000 people died.

According to the Herald, Mattis previously said Rishikof was fired for failing to follow proper Pentagon channels.

Defense attorney Jay Connell told the publication that the DOJ may have found out about the possible plea deal because some defense attorneys wanted the department's assurances that their clients would spend the rest of their sentences at Guantánamo Bay rather than in a prison in the United States. Rishikof was reportedly in touch with a deputy of the attorney general to discuss such assurances.

#2258426 at 2018-07-24 03:33:09 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #2846: Fist Full Of Dough Edition

>>2257776

HOT SAUCE

Defense lawyer: Attorney General Sessions objected to 9/11 trial plea deal

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba

Attorney General Jeff Sessions called Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in October to protest exploratory talks about a plea deal in the 9/11 case that would have taken the death penalty off the table, according to an investigation by defense attorneys who want a military judge to order both men to testify at the war court.

At issue is Mattis' Feb. 5 firing of the overseer of military commissions, Harvey Rishikof, at a time when he had been secretly exploring the possibility of guilty pleas to resolve the terror trial. Pretrial hearings continue this week in the case that started with the May 2012 arraignment of alleged plot mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four alleged accomplices.

https:// www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article215247415.html

#519479 at 2018-02-28 21:09:28 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #638: Back Up ...AND.... Running Edition

Speaking of military tribunals and 9/11, did anybody notice this in the news the other day?

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA -- The judge for the pre-trial hearings for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed on Monday ordered Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to explain why the Pentagon fired two top military officials involved in organizing plea deals for five suspects in the 9/11 attacks.

Earlier this month, Mattis fired Harvey Rishikof, the convening authority for military commissions who was appointed in April approve to cases for trials, review convictions and provide defense teams. General Counsel William S. Castle fired Gary Brown, the legal adviser for military commissions. The Pentagon said the firings were for "innocuous reasons."

www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-02-26/9-11-judge-orders-mattis-to-justify-firing-of-officials

#507307 at 2018-02-27 04:40:15 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #624: ISO POTUS Tweet

February 26, 2018 12:19 PM
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@miamiherald.com

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, CUBA
The judge in the Sept. 11 terror case said in court Monday that he would order Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to explain in writing why he suddenly fired the top official overseeing the war court.

Defense attorneys in the case are calling the dismissal foul play, in part because some had been hopeful of negotiating a deal in the death-penalty case with Harvey Rishikof, a Mattis appointee who until Feb. 5 served as Convening Authority for Military Commissions. The judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, quoted a prosecution filing that has not been made public as characterizing as "innocuous" the reasons for the firings of Rishikof and his legal adviser, Gary Brown.

"We simply need to know why they were terminated," Pohl said. "If it's for an innocuous reason, which the government alleges it could have been, the issue may go away; if it's for something else, it may not go away."

Pohl is presiding in the case of the five men accused of directing or helping the 19 hijackers who crashed four commercial airliners in New York, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001, killing 2,976 people. Four lawyers have held the title of Convening Authority or Acting Convening Authority since the alleged plot mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and four accused co-conspirators were arraigned in May 2012. Only Rishikof was fired.
Pohl announced that he would issue the order in writing this week and set a March 19 deadline for a written declaration by Mattis and another by Acting Department of Defense General Counsel William S. Castle explaining the "facts and circumstances" of the firings.

On Sunday, defense attorney Jay Connell called the firings a "coordinated decapitation of the leadership of the Office of Military Commissions." He represents Ammar al Baluchi, the nephew of Mohammed.

Connell filed a pleading on Feb. 23, asking Pohl to dismiss the case over the firings on grounds of "unlawful influence," an expression that means government or political interference. Prosecutors apparently argued that the issue should not go forward because of insufficient evidence to make that allegation; defense lawyers asked prosecutors to get them some.

Instead, Pohl decided he would get the issue started by ordering the two senior leaders to submit declarations.

RELATED: "Secretary of Defense fires Guantánamo war court overseer"

Pohl noted that there is no public explanation for the firings. A Pentagon spokesman said Feb. 6 that the Department of Defense "does not discuss personnel actions." However, spokesman Tom Crosson added, "I can confirm that the Department has not initiated nor is it aware of any investigation involving Mr. Rishikof or Mr. Brown."

mattis-AP_18046414951615
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis addresses a media conference after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018.
VIRGINIA MAYO ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mattis appointed Rishikof and had the unique authority to fire him. Brown, as Legal Adviser for Military Commissions, was fired by the top lawyer at the Pentagon because the Office of the General Counsel handled his hiring. Neither man has responded to repeated requests by the Herald to explain what happened.