Lawyers for alleged 9/11 plotters want to experience the conditions their clients are being held in. Source: AAP
LAWYERS for five alleged 9/11 plotters have urged a military judge to give them two days to visit the super-secure prison and cells where their clients are being held.
The defendants, meanwhile, boycotted proceedings on the second day of preparatory hearings at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for their trial on charges of murdering nearly 3000 people on September 11, 2001.
"You want to sleep with your client?" Colonel James Pohl, the military judge presiding over the case, retorted.
"What would be the purpose of spending two days in the facility?"
Lawyers said they wanted to experience firsthand the conditions in which their clients were being held.
No lawyer or journalist has ever been inside the Camp 7 maximum security facility.
David Nevin, the lawyer defending self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said it would be "for us to be able to observe exactly what life in this camp is like, particularly for a person that was tortured".
"It would be the best way to have a better understanding of their conditions of confinement," said Major Walter Ruiz, the military lawyer defending Saudi national Mustapha al-Hussawi.
Prosecutor Major Robert McGovern responded by proposing a two-hour tour of the facility, calling it "the safest way" to meet the requirement for a "confinement visit".
But defence lawyer Kevin Bogucki, who represents Yemeni national Ramzi Binalshibh, called that "unacceptable".
A two-hour tour, he said, would be "like a Jungle Cruise at Disney World, you're not allowed to leave the boat".
Jim Harrington, another lawyer for Binalshibh, said: "Being in the place is the only way to feel it."
He alleged that in other prisons he had seen "corners where you could take people and beat them".
"Forty-eight hours is the very minimum," insisted Cheryl Bormann, who is defending Yemeni national Walid bin Attash.
Mohammed and the four other accused 9/11 plotters appeared on Monday, but chose not to leave their cells on Tuesday, as is their right.
An officer from the prison at Guantanamo, where the accused and other terror suspects are detained, said the defendants informed him verbally and in writing that they would not attend the proceedings on Tuesday.
One of the suspects, bin Attash, said at Monday's hearing that the defendants had no "motivating factor" to come to court.
"Our attorneys are bound and we are bound also," he said.
"The government doesn't want us to say anything, to do anything."
Pending the judge's decision on their overnight visit, the lawyers have obtained the release of International Red Cross documents considered to be classified.
The humanitarian agency is the only group able to enter Camp 7.
Hearings at the maximum security court are broadcast over closed-circuit television with a 40-second delay to journalists and observers in a nearby room, a media centre and at Fort Meade in Maryland, outside Washington DC.
But a portion of the hearing was censored on Monday and the feed was cut off, much to the surprise of the judge, who admitted on Tuesday that three minutes of the exchange should not have been censored.
During the break in the feed, the lawyers were discussing the CIA prisons where the five accused were detained and interrogated before being transferred to Guantanamo.
The defence maintains that the CIA "black sites," which have classified locations, should be preserved because they constitute potential evidence that the five were tortured at the prisons.
The five suspects underwent harsh interrogations before they were taken to Guantanamo, including waterboarding, or simulated drowning.
Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding 183 times, according to the CIA.
Military prosecutors argue that any discussion of the CIA's detention program has to remain classified to protect intelligence sources and methods that could prevent a future attack.
One prosecutor, Joanna Baltes, explained that the "original classification authority" (OCA) has the power to review the feeds.
As the CIA ran the "black sites," it would seem the agency would be the OCA in this matter.
Defence lawyer James Connell later confirmed that the OCA monitors the feed and has the ability to kill it.
Connell, who is defending Pakistani national Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, said the defence would seek to prove that the accused suffered "pretrial illegal punishment," which is prohibited under the US constitution and military laws.
At the Guantanamo hearing, the judge postponed until mid-February the sensitive debate on the CIA "black sites".
Meanwhile, he is to decide whether the suspects should be excluded from certain portions of their own trial that are deemed "classified".
A closed-door session is scheduled for Wednesday, with the public hearings set to resume on Thursday morning.
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