“This is what I wish, to be martyred”
MichaelW on Jun 05 2008 at 12:45 pm | Filed under: Around the Web
From Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s statements to the U.S. military court today:
The accused al Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks stood in a U.S. military court on Thursday, sang a chant of praise to Allah and said he would welcome the death penalty.
“This is what I wish, to be martyred,” Pakistani captive Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the highest-ranking al Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, told the Guantanamo war crimes court.
He and four accused co-conspirators appeared in court at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba for the first time on charges that could result in their execution.
As the judge questioned him about whether he was satisfied with the U.S. military lawyer appointed to defend him, Mohammed stood and began to sing in Arabic, cheerfully pausing to translate his own words into English.
“My shield is Allah most high,” he said, adding that his religion forbade him from accepting a lawyer from the United States and that he wanted to act as his own attorney.
In other news, Br’er Rabbit reiterated his plea welcoming death so long as he is spared the briar patch.
2 Responses to ““This is what I wish, to be martyred””
Trackback URI | Comments RSS
would this maybe be better as a regular post and not as an around the web sidebar post?
Maybe. I only had the snarky Br’er Rabbit comment though, so I thought it qualified more for the “go read the rest” type of post.