Families of 9/11 victims to attend tribunals

December 6, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

Five victims’ relatives are selected to witness each tribunal session.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The mothers of two men killed in the Sept. 11 attacks are traveling to Guantanamo Bay this weekend hoping to look into the eyes of the man who says he is responsible for the worst terrorist strike on U.S. soil.

The two will be among those present next week as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the attacks’ self-professed mastermind, and four co-defendants appear in one of the final sessions of war-crimes tribunals under outgoing President George W. Bush at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

“I hope they stare us in the face and we stare back,” said Maureen Santora, whose firefighter son Christopher was killed at the World Trade Center. “I want these folks to know it wasn’t just two towers they knocked down. They have altered our lives permanently.”

The two mothers, separated from the al-Qaida chieftain by only a glass partition, want to size up an unrepentant defendant prone to anti-U.S. outbursts in the courtroom.

“I’d like to take the measure of the man and his buddies, his ugly lieutenants, and see what kind of a man brags about planning the ugly events of Sept. 11, 2001,” said Alice Hoagland, of Redwood Estates, California. Her son, Mark Bingham, is believed to be one of the passengers who fought hijackers on the United flight that crashed that day in rural Pennsylvania.

Santora, a 63-year-old retired educator from Long Island City, New York, said she will scrutinize the men’s behavior and mannerisms for clues to their motives. “Why does somebody have so much hate in their heart?” she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Santora and Hoagland were invited to Guantanamo through a new Pentagon lottery system. Five victims’ relatives are now selected to observe each tribunal session along with one other family member of their choice. In the past, the Pentagon said family members could not attend because it was too difficult logistically to accommodate all who wanted to.

Hoagland, a 59-year-old writer and speaker, said she hopes the defendants are spared the death penalty so they can “live out their miserable lives in prison.”

“I think they have demonstrated the very worst of humanity. They have much to do in the way of redemption,” she told the AP.

The family members will watch the proceedings from a gallery at the rear of the cavernous, high-security courtroom and will not be allowed to address the defendants.

Relatives of about 30 other victims, mainly firefighters, have given Santora memorial cards that she plans to bring into court “to know their spirit is with us.”