With no date in sight for the September 11 terrorist attack trial, prosecutors are asking judge Col. James L. Pohl to permit the making of recordings of live, in-court victim-impact testimony from several elderly relatives of people murdered in the attacks writes Carol Rosenberg in the Miami Herald.
If the prosecutors’ plan is permitted, those accused of training and financing the 9/11 hijackers would be in the courtroom during filming. Their attorneys could cross-examine the witnesses, watched by the public.
Some of the proposed witnesses include the 74-year-old father of one of the heroes of United 93; a 68-year-old woman whose husband was aboard American Airlines Flight 77; an 83-year-old man who lost his son, daughter-in-law and 2-year-old granddaughter aboard United 175; and a 77-year-old retired FDNY captain who lost both his sons at the World Trade Center. The youngest of the possible witnesses is 65.
Questions are being debated — whether the filming would take place in open court, whether Guantánamo Bay needs to be the site of the filming and others.
