My week at Guantánamo Bay
The Guardian’s Julian Borger recently spent a week at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, attending the 33rd pre-trial hearing of five 9/11 suspects. He discusses why arguably the most important criminal trial in American history has still not begun. And: Damian Carrington on the catastrophic decline of insects
The Guantánamo Bay detention camp was established in the months after the attacks of 11 September 2001. Among those detained there are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9/11. But 17 years after the attacks, arguably the most important criminal trial in American history has yet to begin.
The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, recently flew to Guantánamo Bay to attend the 33rd pre-trial military tribunal hearing against Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 conspirators. They were first charged in 2008 and the military commission proceedings began in 2012. The accused are getting old, some of the witnesses have died and the trial is still at least a year off as the hearings have been bogged down in procedural arguments. Julian speaks to Anushka Asthana about why the trial has still not started and the impact that three years of “enhanced interrogation” at CIA black sites has had on the case.