WASHINGTON — It’s not going to happen. The American judicial system is not going to allow Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his four co-defendants in the Guantanamo terrorist trials to become martyrs by sabotaging their defense cases and being sentenced to death.

At the arraignment yesterday of the five accused of involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Mohammad took the lead in rejecting the lawyers who had been assigned to defend him. The other four did the same. They said they would defend themselves, relying upon Muslim law and ignoring the defenses available to them under the American legal system. If the result is that they are convicted and sentenced to death, then they said they would be satisfied to go to their deaths as martyrs in the struggle between Islam and the West.

Their problem is that they are being tried in the first case brought before a Military Commission created by Congress to deal with alleged terrorists. There are serious questions about the fairness of these Commissions. There is no way the system will permit these defendants to be put to death without raising some of these questions: Was some of the evidence against them obtained through torture? Was hearsay evidence used against the defendants? Was some of the testimony delivered in secret?

These and other issues will be examined in this historic first Guantanamo trial, whether the defendants like it or not. As for giving the accused terrorists the satisfaction of scuttling their own defenses and becoming martyrs by means of lethal injections, it’s not going to happen.

– Fred Graham, In Session senior editor