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Boise Lawyers are trying to Defend 9/11 Architects

Posted on: April 22, 2008

David Nevin and Scott McKay, attorneys from Boise have decided to defend death penalty charges against Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who allegedly masterminded the gruesome 9/11 attacks in 2001. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti of Pakistani extraction, was said to have been al-Qaeda’s third in command when he was captured in Pakistan in March 2003. The charges listed 169 overt acts allegedly committed by the defendant in furtherance of the September 11 events. The two will work without pay under a civilian program sponsored by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union. Capt. Scott Prince, an eminent Navy lawyer, will lead the defense team, which will also comprise another military attorney from the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Prince is known for defining waterboarding as torture. Mohammed was waterboarded at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

The charges will now be sent to Susan Crawford, the convening authority for the military commissions, to determine whether they will be referred to trial. Any trials would be held by military tribunal under the terms of the Military Commissions Act, passed by the US Congress in 2006. The Act set up tribunals to try terror suspects who were not US citizens. Two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, who say they are being deprived of their rights to have their cases heard by a US civilian court, are challenging the law.

Nevin and McKay have defended an alleged terrorist before when they won acquittal for a doctoral student at the University of Idaho, Sami al-Hussayen, who was accused of helping an al-Qaida front. Nevin was also involved in the Randy Weaver/Ruby Ridge case in 1993, finally getting Kevin Harris acquitted of federal murder charges.

John Adams Project: The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (ACLU) has formed John Adams Project, which will provide the expertise of the civilian capital defense bar to Guantanamo, with adequate financial resources to assist the appointed military defense lawyers. They wish to provide constitutionally effective assistance of counsel to “high-value” detainees facing the death penalty before the military commissions

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