(AP) Hours before dawn on March 1, 2003, the U.S. scored its most thrilling victory yet against the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks — the capture of a disheveled Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, hauled away by intelligence agents from a hideout in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
The global manhunt for al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader had taken 18 months. But America’s attempt to bring him to justice, in a legal sense, has taken much, much longer. Critics say it has become one of the war on terror’s greatest failures.
As Sunday’s 21st anniversary of the terror attacks approaches, Mohammed and four other men accused of 9/11-related crimes still sit in a U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, their planned trials before a military tribunal endlessly postponed.
The latest setback came last month when pretrial hearings scheduled for early fall were canceled.
