Published 00:06, November the 19th, 2009
Obama’s prediction: Death for 9/11 leader
President Barack Obama may be thinking past the controversy over the decision to try the 9/11 mastermind blocks from Ground Zero: He’s already talking about the execution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Obama said in an interview with NBC News yesterday that anyone offended by legal rights given to Mohammed won’t find it “offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.”
He then added that he wasn’t prejudging the outcome of the trial. “That’s the job of the prosecutors, the judge and jury,” he said.
Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder spent yesterday defending the decision to bring alleged terrorists to American soil.
“We know that we can prosecute terrorists in our federal courts safely and securely because we have been doing it for years,” Holder said.
Guantanamo extension
Washington. President Barack Obama said yesterday he believes the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can be closed next year, but he acknowledged that he will not meet his original January deadline.
Obama said he was not disappointed that he would not meet the one-year deadline he set upon taking office last January because, he said, “I knew this was going to be hard.”
He made the comment in Beijing in an interview aired on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Bret Baier” yesterday.
Obama meets with half brother
BEIJING. President Barack Obama took time out of his busy schedule in China to meet with his half brother, who lives there — but only for five minutes.
Obama met with Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, who had the same, late, father as the president, on Monday evening in Beijing, a White House official said.