Chief Prosecutor Statement on This Week’s Hearings in United States v. Mohammad et al

Good afternoon. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak with you after five days of pre-trial hearings in United States v. Mohammad et al. Many of you have indicated that you found aspects of the week remarkable, so I expect plenty of questions. But first, please indulge me for a moment as I relate the most remarkable thing I was fortunate to experience this week. It did not occur in the courtroom. Rather, one evening after the day’s proceedings and as night descended on Guantanamo Bay, the daughter and son of a man who was killed while trying to rescue those trapped in the World Trade Center told me with extraordinary grace and strength of the wrenching and emotional journey that brought them to this trial. They told me how their mother had been diagnosed with cancer just three months before September 11th. They told me how that tragic revelation had spurred a renewal of their parents’ commitment to one another. They told me how they had hoped against hope their parents would be given just five years to cherish one another before their mother died. And in hushed tones, they told me—as they recalled their dying mother’s heartbreak in having survived the life force that was their father—of how that three month interlude came to be remembered by the entire family, and by Mom foremost, as the “One Hundred Days of Love.” I will never forget that evening, and I am so grateful to the two of them for sharing that intensely personal passage with me and for giving me permission to honor their deceased parents by sharing it with all of you.