This article was produced in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
WASHINGTON – The protracted Guantánamo Bay, Cuba trial of five men accused of plotting September 11, 2001 hit a new roadblock on Friday when the military appointed an Air Force judge to preside over it lead The court martial prosecutor declared the officer unqualified.
The chief of military commissions appointed Lt. Col. Matthew N. McCall as the sixth judge to handle the death penalty case since the indictment in 2012. However, he is the Deputy Chief Justice of the Air Force at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, has served as a military judge for less than two years and called on prosecutors to protest Friday night.
“While respecting Lt. Col. McCall’s career and achievements, the government does not believe that the information available makes him qualified to lead this case,” the prosecutor wrote in a two-page notice.
According to the rules for judicial proceedings against military commissions, a judge at the court martial must have been a military judge in one of the services for at least two years. Prosecutors added that if Colonel McCall did not withdraw from the case himself, he would try to remove him.
The developments raised further doubts as to when and how the prosecution will be able to reopen the trial, just the expected year-long trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other prisoners in Guantánamo, who are alleged to have been with the 19 kidnappers conspired that had killed 2,976 people in New York and Pennsylvania and the Pentagon.
The case was assigned a number of judges, and that year one opted for retirement, another on an administrative basis, and a third took two weeks to apologize again, citing personal relationships with New Yorkers that were “direct were affected ”. through the attacks.
The Senate upheld Colonel McCall’s promotion to Colonel on July 30, although his promotion has not yet taken place in a Pentagon system that has ongoing promotions. Once it becomes official, he would have to stay in rank for three years to retire with the benefits of a colonel. Circumstances that suggest he might stay in the bank long enough to bring the complex conspiracy case to justice.
Colonel McCall does not seem to have any such conflicts either. His official biography showed that he was a law clerk in Hawaii at the time of the 9/11 attacks and had previously attended law school at the University of Hawaii.
He was admitted to the Hawaii bar on November 1, 2001, served at least once as a prosecutor in Iraq for six months in 2006 and 2007, then focused on military defense work from 2008 to 2013. He was a 2009 defense attorney with the Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field in the Florida Panhandle and served as a senior defense attorney in Charleston, SC
More recently, the September 11 study was hampered by personnel changes, logistical challenges, and the coronavirus pandemic. Together, they have suspended most litigation and the forced cancellation of every pre-trial hearing on this case since February.
The upcoming construction to fill a gap in the available housing at the base makes it clear that the Pentagon is planning a test start date in 2022.
The Defense Logistics Agency recently ordered more than 150 prefabricated single-family homes for $ 11.6 million from a Las Vegas company. The delivery date was January and February 2022. At an outdated airfield, a village of 375 square feet would be installed on the court grounds, Camp Justice, for the lawyers and other professional staff attending the September 11 trial.
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