What the 9-11 Plotters Will Say in Court by Robert Spencer

With the Obama administration moving the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other masterminds of 9/11 to New York City, many have pointed out that the defendants are likely to use the trial as a platform to spread their views on jihad, the U.S., and the war on terror. That’s most likely true -- and we already know what they will say.

They told us last year, when they wrote a six-page document they filed with the military commission at Guantanamo: an “Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations.”

“With regards to these nine accusations that you are putting us on trial for,” they explain, “to us, they are not accusations. To us they are badges of honor, which we carry with pride.” Their pride is explicitly and proudly rooted in Islam: “Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of Jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims.” With unusual forthrightness, they declare that “killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion. These actions are our offerings to God.”

That said, however, they view the conflict between the West and the Islamic world is all the West’s fault. This is a view that Barack Obama apparently shares. In his landmark June 2009 speech in Cairo he explained the conflict solely in terms of what the West had done to Muslim countries. The plotters agreed, saying, “In addition, it is the imposed reality on Muslims in Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, in the land of the two holy sites [Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia], and in the rest of the world, where Muslims are suffering from your brutality, terrorism, killing of the innocent, and occupying their lands and their holy sites.”