GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE—Years of anger and frustration reached a dramatic boiling point on Wednesday evening when one of the 9/11 victim’s relatives told a defense lawyer for terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to "go fuck yourself."
Military proceedings for the accused terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay came to an abrupt halt on Tuesday following revelations that the FBI had launched an investigation into what they claim is the defense team’s improper dissemination of several writings penned by Mohammed.
The hearings are set to resume early Thursday morning so that the prosecution can appoint a special appointee to deal with the fallout from the FBI investigation.
Several of the 9/11 victim’s relatives met with members of the defense for a tense session that ended with several emotional family members angrily storming out.
Donald Arias, whose brother Adam was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, said that he walked out of yesterday’s meeting just ten minutes in when a lead lawyer for the defense team told him that he enjoys his job.
"I asked them why they do what they did and they started spouting Constitution to me. Obviously they think that they’re coming down from Mt. Olympus to mix with the great unwashed here, we objects of pity, 9/11 families," Arias said just moments after storming out of the meeting room.
"This is a very emotional issue for me," he told the Washington Free Beacon. "I lost a brother who was 37 years old, was a wonderful guy."
"So I asked [Mohammed’s lead defense attorney David] Nevin why does he do what he does. ‘Because I enjoy my job,’" Nevin responded.
"So I asked [Nevin], ‘What’s it like to sit next to a guy and defend a guy who sawed off [reporter] Danny Pearl’s head? How does that make you feel? He wouldn’t answer the question, how he felt on a human level, how it feels to sit next to a cold blooded murder who sawed off a journalist’s head," Arias recalled. "He wouldn’t answer. He started spouting Constitution and all this other stuff.
Asked by the Free Beacon to recall his final words to the defense lawyers, Arias said: "I told them to go fuck themselves. I said, ‘I mean that, do it with vigor.’"
"I’m very angry at these people," Arias added. "I mean, it’s one thing to have a trial and another thing to drag it out and drag it out and drag it out."
Gloria Snekszer, another family member whose sister Vicky perished when Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, also walked out of the meeting.
"I could not understand how [Nevin] could actually say he enjoys his job," she said, visibly shaken. "I’m stunned. There’s nothing left for me to say at that point if you tell me you enjoy defending terrorists. There’s nothing left I can say to you."
"I could not for the life of me understand how any of them could sit there and do what they’re doing," Snekszer said. "I told them I thought they were all horrible people for doing what they’re doing."
Arias said that while the accused terrorists have a right to be defended, he expected more compassion from the defense team.
"When you ask a human being a human question I expect a human response, not some lawyerly bullshit about the Constitution," he said. "How does it feel to sit next to a murderer? How does that feel?"
"I didn’t come here for some lawyerly nonsense," he added. "I just wanted to find out what motivates these people and still it’s a mystery to me."
During a meeting with reporters on Wednesday, other relatives of victims expressed frustration with the lengthy delays that continue to bog down the proceedings.
Several of the 9/11 family members speculated that the Obama administration is intentionally seeking to derail the hearings in a bid to bring them into federal court stateside.
"They’re guilty. Let’s try them fairly and then kill them," said Charlie Clyne, whose wife Susan was killed in Tower One.
"Take them out to the Bronx Zoo," Clyne proposed, referring to the detainees as "parasites." "No, I’m serious. Feed them to the lions, and this way we’ll turn them back into the streaming piles of steaming shit that they have always been."