Guantanamo 9/11 trial suspended amid COVID-19 scare
Guantanamo Bay
The pretrialhearingin the case against accused9/11attacks mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others wassuspendedFridayamida coronavirusscarein the courtroom at the US naval base inGuantanamoBay, Cuba.
An official of the Office of Military Commissions, which conducts theGuantanamotrials, said that the confirmed infection of a media reporter who was at the court all last week and the suspected infection of another person who had been in the courtroom caused the judge to halt thehearing.
It would have been the final day after two weeks in which the new judge, Air Force Colonel Matthew McCall, sought to get the long-festering case back on track after an 18-month delay due to the pandemic.
It was not yet known how other military tribunals ofGuantanamodetainees would be affected,amidan effort to advance prosecutions two decades after the devastating Al-Qaeda attacks on September11, 2001.
There are 39 detainees still at the base, with 10 facingtrialcurrently. Four of the five in the September11trialhave been vaccinated, according to attorneys.
The Pentagon has also struggled to get all of its military and civilian staff vaccinated, and is only implementing a mandatory vaccination policy beginning this month.
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According to Military Times, nearly half, 20of the 46 service member deaths from coronavirus died since mid-July, as the Delta variant has spread.
None of the deaths were of people fully vaccinated.
Like other US military bases,Guantanamo, with a population of about 6,000, has suffered its share ofCovid-19 cases despite being relatively isolated, both from the rest of Cuba and the US mainland.
The military tribunals though require defense and prosecution attorneys, legal aides, stenographers, judges and others to fly in to the base for the hearings, though a new electronically-linked remotehearingroom was just opened just outside Washington to allow for participation by video feed.
On a visit to theGuantanamoBay Base last week, reporters were guided by two civilian public affairs officials who said they were not vaccinated and who often went maskless, indoors and outdoors.