STRASBOURG, October 28 (RAPSI, Ingrid Burke) - Several defense attorneys representing Khalid Shaikh Mohammad (KSM) and his alleged 9/11 co-conspirators have written a letter imploring US President Barack Obama to declassify information on what has come to be known as the Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) program, The Miami Herald reported Friday, alongside a copy of the letter itself.

The five defendants in the case include: KSM; Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek Bin 'Attash; Ramzi Binalshibh; Ali Abdul Aziz Ali (aka Ammar al-Baluchi); and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi. Lawyers for each of the defendants signed off on the letter to Obama.

The letter begins by reminding Obama of his June 2011 vow of commitment to the UN Convention Against Torture, wherein the president asserted: “As President, I have therefore made it clear that the United States will prohibit torture without exception or equivocation, and I reaffirmed our commitment to the Convention’s tenets and our domestic laws.”

Urging Obama to stay true to his word, the attorneys wrote: “We ask that you declassify all aspects of the RDI program with respect to our clients against whom the United States seeks to impose the death penalty. True transparency and meaningful justice can only be achieved by a faithful application of deeds to aspirational statements.”

The letter asserts that the program’s present classification restrictions serve only to enable the cover-up of war crimes.

The attorneys then point to Executive Order 13526, which stipulates that among other things, the classification of information cannot be aimed at the concealment of violations of law, or at the prevention of embarrassment.

The letter concludes: “Quite simply, the classification of the RDI program is suppressing evidence, suppressing the truth, and ultimately will suppress any real justice. This suppression violates our law and degrades our well-established jurisprudence regarding the defense of death penalty cases. We thus appeal to you to declassify the RDI program as to our clients who face death penalty prosecution.”

In connection with their alleged involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks, all five men were charged jointly in May 2011 with conspiracy, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, murder in violation of the law of war, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, hijacking or hazarding a vessel or aircraft, and terrorism, according to a backgrounder on the US Military Commissions website.

KSM is described in his US Department of Defense (DOD) detainee biography as “the driving force behind the attacks on 11 September 2001,” who devoted most of his adult years to plotting terror. The biography further categorizes KSM as “one of history’s most infamous terrorists,” whose 2003 capture “deprived al-Qa’ida of one of its most capable senior operatives.”

Bin 'Attash’s DOD biography alleges that the young “scion of a prominent terrorist family” played an important role as an al-Qa’ida operative between 1998 and 2003. The biography claims that bin 'Attash had reportedly been selected by deceased al-Qa’ida leader Osama Bin Ladin in 1999 to become one of the 9/11 hijackers, but was prevented from doing so due to an arrest in Yemen that same year. The text continues: “Although his brief imprisonment blocked his travel to the United States, [he]otherwise assisted in the operation, including helping Bin Ladin select additional hijackers and traveling … [to meet with other hijackers] and to take two flights on a US-flagged airliner to assess in-flight security procedures.”

Binalshibh is described in his DOD biography as a key facilitator in the 9/11 attacks, and a lead operative in a post-9/11 plot to crash hijacked aircraft into London’s Heathrow Airport.

As asserted by his DOD biography, Al-Baluchi – described as a Pakistan-based operative for al-Qa’ida – allegedly served as a key lieutenant for his uncle, KSM, during the 9/11 attacks. The biography describes his family as one of extremists “that has spawned such notorious terrorists as his detained uncle and 11 September mastermind [KSM] and cousin and incarcerated World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef.”

Hawsawi’s DOD biography claims that the “trusted, respected” former financial adviser was one of two key individuals entrusted by KSM to manage the funding for the 9/11 hijackings.

The Miami Herald reported Friday that prosecutors requested a January 2015 start date for trial.