Two Boise attorneys will defend death-penalty charges against reputed al-Qaida kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
If Mohammed accepts the team, Boise law partners David Nevin and Scott McKay could find themselves in one of the most high-profile cases to come out of the controversial detention site.
Mohammed has been held for four years, has never seen a lawyer, and was one of the terror suspects who was "waterboarded" while in U.S. custody.
The Boise men will join Navy Capt. Prescott "Scott" Prince, who was assigned to the case last week, and another military JAG officer who could be named soon. Prince has yet to see Mohammed, a U.S.-educated Pakistani citizen known in intelligence circles as "KSM."
The Pentagon prosecutor has identified Mohammed as the lead defendant in a proposed prosecution to try six detainees at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on capital murder conspiracy charges in the 2001 attacks.
This could be the most controversial and high-profile case in a career of controversial and high-profile cases for the Boiseans.
In 2004, McKay and Nevin secured a federal court acquittal for a Saudi man, Sami al-Hussayen, 34, who was a doctoral candidate at the University of Idaho.
In U.S. anti-terror sweeps following the 9/11 attacks, Hussayen was accused of "providing material support for terror," for allegedly serving as webmaster for a Muslim charity that the U.S. government called an al-Qaida front. He was cleared of all terror charges and returned to his native Saudi Arabia.
Nevin also won an acquittal for Kevin Harris, a friend of Randy Weaver's, accused of killing a U.S. marshal in the 1993 case that followed the federal siege on Weaver's Ruby Ridge compound.
The Pentagon's chief defense counsel for military commissions, Army Reserves Col. Steve David, was in the process of assigning another U.S. military lawyer or JAG, short for judge advocate general, to Mohammed's case.
Nevin and McKay have agreed to work as volunteer civilian defense counsel under a program sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Prince said in an interview that he would also add a paralegal, a translator and intelligence analyst to his team. Additionally, he was seeking Pentagon approval for a so-called "mitigation expert" on the case.
Prince said he anticipated "a very complex documentary case," with lots of evidence to sift through in light of U.S. government disclosures that Mohammed had been held four years incommunicado, never seen a lawyer and was subjected to White House approved "enhanced interrogation techniques."
The CIA has confirmed that Mohammed was among three war-on-terror captives who was waterboarded in U.S. custody, a simulated drowning technique that Prince flatly labeled "torture."
Ultimately, under military commissions rules, it will be up to Mohammed to decide whether he will accept any of the attorneys.
In recent, non-capital cases brought before to the military commissions, three alleged al-Qaida foot soldiers have fired their Pentagon-paid defense lawyers, and said they would boycott their trials.
In those cases, conviction carries life in prison. Acquittal likewise means likely continued detention as the U.S. government argues that "enemy combatants" can be held at Guantanamo until the end of hostilities in the global war on terror.
In capital cases, conviction could carry execution although no system for carrying out the death penalty has been established at Guantanamo.
Prince said he hoped to introduce himself to Mohammed in coming weeks, after getting special security clearances governing former CIA held detainees at the remote U.S. Navy base.
Nevin and McKay need the same clearances and would meet him later, if Mohammed agrees to their volunteering to work on the case. It is believed that neither have ever visited the offshore detention center.
Both men declined through an assistant to comment Monday.
