November 18th, 2024
Chanel Shum
Link to the full article here.
Sept. 11, 2001, was my first day of preschool, the start of my education. That morning, my father, See Wong Shum, went to work on the 82nd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center — and never came home.
I imagine that learning about terrorism and loss was never meant to be part of my first-day curriculum. Nor, 23 years later, was attending pretrial hearings at Guantánamo Bay for those accused of plotting the attacks part of any life plan I had envisioned. Like many, I assumed that justice had been served long ago. Instead, I confronted a reality tangled in legal red tape, endless delays and violations of the rule of law.
It’s a reality that could be ended by plea agreements. But that possibility, too, has become mired in controversy and legal wrangling.
In April, I joined other relatives of 9/11 victims on a military charter to the U.S. naval base in Cuba through a government-sponsored program allowing us to witness the legal proceedings against the alleged perpetrators. For a week, we sat behind three layers of bulletproof glass, looking directly at Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the attacks. Watching him, I recalled the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which my father had also been through, and other events for which Mohammed claimed responsibility. I thought about how my family’s life had been changed forever.
And yet, I felt uncomfortable with a justice system that allowed years of indefinite detention without trial, which I saw as antithetical to both the rule of law and my core values.
One defense attorney told us, “There must be justice before there is peace.” I’m still waiting for both. Over the past 12 years, more than 400 family members, eight judges, and countless lawyers have passed through these pretrial hearings. Yet there’s still no official trial date in sight for Mohammed or any of the four others accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks.
In late July, plea agreements were approved for Mohammed and two others. Since then, I’ve been going through whiplash as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rescinded the deals less than 48 hours later, a court ruled them valid in early November, and the Pentagon quickly appealed that decision.
Despite watching the legal teams at Guantánamo move at what they called a “breakneck pace,” it is difficult to have faith in a system that has charged or convicted of war crimes only 11 of the nearly 800 men who were detained at the base over two decades.
I agree with many human rights activists and other victim family members who support plea deals, as well as the 9/11 prosecutors who wrote of the agreements, “It is our collective, reasoned, and good-faith judgment that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice.”
Although 9/11 family members are a large group with divergent views, we can all agree that the case has taken far too long. Plea agreements will guarantee irreversible sentences for each of the detainees before 2026, as opposed to a trial, which could add years of appeals and still ultimately be overturned in federal court. Under the proposed plea terms, the accused would acknowledge responsibility for the deaths of thousands, answer any questions family members have, waive their rights to appeal and face life imprisonment.
There is no playbook for grief, especially grief that stems from mass violence. All I know is that I don’t want any other family to experience what mine has. My grandparents, who had already buried two children who died in separate tragedies, had to add a third grave for my father, even though there were no remains to bury. They passed away before any resolution was reached, as have many others who deserved to see a judicial outcome within their lifetime.
It’s impossible to bring back those we’ve lost or to undo the cycle of violence that followed — the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rise of Islamophobia and the countless lives impacted by fear and conflict. What I can hope for is finality — something that plea agreements would deliver.
As my group departed Guantánamo on Saturday, I watched three people leap off the ferry dock into the blue waters of Guantánamo Bay. “It’s a tradition,” someone explained, “a way to mark your final departure from the island.”
I long for that moment — the day the case is closed and the ferry peels away from the island for the very last time, and the base becomes smaller and smaller until it fades into the distance. I long for that day for everyone involved.
I don’t know yet whether I’ll ever have children, or what their first day of school might look like. But I hope, if I do have any, that when I tell them about their grandfather, the story will have a better conclusion than it has today. And that when they learn about loss, they will learn about justice alongside it.