With 9/11 plea deals in flux, victims' families sort through their feelings
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After his only child was killed on 9/11, Ken Fairben looked for justice in a far-off military courtroom on the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba. He traveled there multiple times to observe hearings for accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and co-defendants, and Fairben has watched other proceedings via closed-circuit video at a military facility near his Long Island home.
He has gotten to know other victims' families on these journeys and taken pained note of the plaque on a wall of a Guantanamo trailer where relatives take court breaks. The sign bears the names of several loved ones who have died while the case has ground on.
And now, after nearly two decades of turns, delays and emotionally exhausting flux, Fairben and his wife, Diane, are waiting to see whether Mohammed pleads guilty as scheduled in the hijacked-plane attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, including paramedic Keith Fairben, at New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
It's unclear whether the pleas will happen. The federal government negotiated but then disavowed the deals and now is asking a court to block them, while defense lawyers want the plan to go forward. So does Ken Fairben, who planned to be at a Long Island military site Friday to watch if the hearing goes forward.
