WASHINGTON — President Obama will have to personally sign the death warrant for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed if the military tribunal he’s going to face sentences him to the ultimate penalty.
Mohammed would likely have faced the death penalty in a civilian proceeding — an avenue the Obama administration rejected yesterday after confronting withering pressure from lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims.
They did not want the trial held in lower Manhattan, only blocks from the scene of the monstrous crime.
The rules governing special military commissions, updated by a 2009 law, are entirely different.