He was born (click title to entry - thank you) in Kuwait to a family from the Pakistani region of Baluchistan, returning to Pakistan as a teenager and then studying at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University...
(That is in Greensboro, North Carolina by the way. It is a minority university with many distingished graduates. Unfortunately, the notoriety here isn't good. We bring people from other lands to learn and to return to their countries to better the quality of lives of their people. I guess the USA doesn't count on hatred and bigorty toward the very diversity we enjoy in the USA to be an issue for its generosity.)
...in the US where he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1986.
In the late 1980s he moved to Peshawar in Pakistan from where he fought with his three brothers alongside Osama bin Laden against the Russians in Afghanistan....
...In 2003 he was working on a plot to hijack aircraft and crash them into Heathrow airport, Big Ben and Canary Wharf when he was captured in March at a house in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Mohammed was subsequently waterboarded 183 times before he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
Behind closed doors at a combatant status review at Guantanamo Bay in 2007 Mohammed issued a statement in which he confessed to involvement in 31 separate plots, adding: “I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation from A to Z.”...
It will no doubt be a long and protracted trial. There will be issues with torture and whether or not any confession is actually valid.
I remember the 'affect' of Mr. Padilla (...not your usual website for information - click here) when he stood trial. By that point, what was the purpose? He didn't know what his life was about or what it had transpired to be.
But, the reason for the trial was not about his 'mental state' or his diminished capacity, it was about his crimes and the people that suffered because of his heinous acts.
If issues of 'competency' manifest there are folks like Richard Cheney the nation can thank for that being an issue at all. If the facts to his prosecution are compromised due to torture conducted illegally and with some sort of validity because some screwed by 'team of Bush lawyers' repeatedly stamped approval within their inner circle of 'good 'ole boy' understanding, the the nation can realize how completely the competency of their Constitution was compromised when it should have been upheld beyond a shadow of a doubt.
No judge in their right mind will ever allow this idiot to walk free, BUT, the 'competency' of the evidence and the person might determine the sentence he will receive.
