Anger, Sighs as 9/11 Families Watch Terror Hearing

NEW YORK -- Lee Hanson became deeply angry as the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and co-defendants tried to undermine their arraignment on 3,000 counts of murder at a military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Hanson's son, daughter-in-law and 2-year-old granddaughter, the youngest 9/11 victim, were killed in the terror attacks over a decade ago. All were aboard United Flight 175, the second plane to crash into the twin towers.

"They praise Allah. I say, `Damn you!'" said the silver-haired retiree from Easton, Conn.

When it comes to justice, "it seems like it's an afterthought," said his wife, Eunice Hanson.

Moans, sighs and exclamations erupted Saturday as Hanson and other relatives of Sept. 11 victims watched the closed-circuit TV feed of the court hearing from a movie theater at Fort Hamilton in New York City. It was one of four U.S. military bases where the arraignment was broadcast live for victims' family members, survivors and emergency personnel who responded to the attacks.

"It's actually a joke, it feels ridiculous," said Jim Riches, whose firefighter son, Jimmy, died at the World Trade Center. "It looks like it's going to be a very long trial."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other defendants were arraigned on charges that include terrorism and murder, the first time in more than three years that they appeared in public. During the hearing, they generally refused to cooperate. At one point, one detainee leafed through a copy of The Economist magazine, then passed it to another. At other times, the defendants knelt in prayer.

About 60 people representing 30 families were in the theater at Fort Hamilton, where the military provided chaplains and grief counselors, Riches said.

Several people who viewed the proceedings said they had little sympathy for the defendants' complaints about their treatment, given the brutality of the deaths of the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and subjected to other measures that some have called torture.

"My brother was murdered in the cockpit of his airplane, and we will have to stand up for him," said Debra Burlingame, who attended the viewing on behalf of her brother, Charles Burlingame, who piloted the jet that hijackers crashed into the Pentagon.

"They're engaging in jihad in a courtroom," she added.

The other bases providing feeds were Fort Devens in Massachusetts, Joint Base McGuire Dix in New Jersey and Fort Meade in Maryland, the only one open to the public.

At Fort Meade, about 80 people watched the proceedings at a movie theater on the base, where "The Lorax" was being promoted on a sign outside. One section of the theater for victims' families was sectioned off with screens, and signs asked that other spectators respect their privacy.

Once the proceedings began, the spectators in the public section laughed at times, including when a lawyer indicated Mohammed was likely not interested in using his headphones for a translator and again, briefly, when one of the defendants stood and the judge said that kind of behavior excited the guards. But the crowd was quiet when the man began to pray.

Only about half as many spectators returned after a midday recess. Very few people were planning to go to the viewing site in New Jersey, a base spokesman said, and a reporter was turned away at the gates to Fort Devens in Massachusetts.

Six victims' families chosen by lottery traveled to Guantanamo to see the arraignment in person. Others ignored the viewing opportunity altogether. Alan Linton of Frederick, Md., who lost his son Alan Jr., an investment banker, at the World Trade Center, said he and his wife put their names in the lottery for the Cuba trip but weren't interested in watching a video feed of the arraignment.

"That's just not the same as being there to me," Linton said. "Going to Fort Meade, it's kind of like watching television."

Whether they watched or not, relatives were frustrated that it's taken so long to bring the Sept. 11 conspirators to justice.

The administration of President Barack Obama dropped earlier military-commission charges against them when it decided in 2009 to try them in federal court in New York. But Congress blocked the civilian trials amid opposition to bringing the defendants to U.S. soil, especially to a courthouse located blocks from the trade center site.

Mohammed and the others could get the death penalty if convicted in the attacks that sent hijacked airliners slamming into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. The trial is probably at least a year away.

But New York police Detective Marc Nell said the viewing at Fort Hamilton more than a decade after 14 men in his unit were killed brought a sense of satisfaction, "a great feeling."

"It was a feeling of pride, being proud knowing that those guys were (being) brought to justice," he said.

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Associated Press writers Meghan Barr and Karen Matthews in New York, David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md., and Jessica Gresko in Fort Meade, Md., contributed to this report.