830: The Forever Trial

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2024

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The trial for the men accused of orchestrating the September 11 terrorist attacks still hasn’t started yet. Family members of those who died that day are still hoping for some kind of accountability, more than 22 years later. This week, the story of how one victim’s sister is navigating this historic and twisted trial.

Prologue: Host Ira Glass introduces the new series that Serial is doing about Guantánamo Bay. This is the second of two episodes of theirs that we’re airing. (2 minutes)
Act One: We meet Colleen Kelly, a member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and learn just how upside down and messed up the trial for the 9/11 accused has been over the past decade. (28 minutes)
Act Two: Sarah Koenig explains what’s probably the best possible outcome that everyone can hope for at this point. And why, when it hits the news someday — if it ever happens — it’s sure to be deeply misunderstood by lots of people. Plus a trip to Guantánamo with Colleen. (31 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show.
0:05.0	If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, this American Life.
0:10.0	org.
0:11.0	From WBSEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, I'm Robert Glass.
0:15.0	If you heard a show last week, you know that we're doing something unusual for these two weeks.
0:20.0	We're featuring stories about Guantanamo made by our colleagues at Serial.
0:24.4	And the one this week is really the one that killed me when I first heard it.
0:27.8	It's about some of the very last people still at Guantanamo.
0:31.1	Five men who were accused of plotting the 9-11 attacks, stories about their trial.
0:37.8	And as Sir Kennek points out, of everything that's happened to Guantanamo, the trial of these five men is the one place
0:44.0	that you would think we could get to some kind of justice.
0:47.1	And then, in this story, step by step
0:50.4	and piece by piece, Sarah lays out why that seems so unlikely to happen.
0:56.4	The fact that these men were tortured in CIA Black Sites for years messes up their cases
1:00.9	in all kinds of ways but that is just one of the problems in the cases.
1:04.0	And there's this one section of the story that I think is especially eye opening and that is the section where Sarah explains
1:10.0	was probably the best possible outcome we could hope for in these cases.
1:14.6	And why, when that hits the news someday, if it ever happens, it sure to be deeply misunderstood
1:22.0	by lots of people, maybe by most people.
1:25.8	And so with that, I turn things over to serial host, Sarah Canick.
1:31.4	Every couple of weeks at the bland hour of 5 p.m. on a Tuesday a group of people you've never heard of clicks into a Zoom meeting. They're all family members of people who died on September 11th.
1:42.0	Hi.
	...

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