Hours before dawn on March 1, 2003, the United States scored its most thrilling victory yet against the plotters of the September 11 attacks – the capture of a dishevelled Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, hauled away by intelligence agents from a hideout in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
The global manhunt for al-Qaeda’s number three leader had taken 18 months. But the US’s attempt to bring him to justice, in a legal sense, has taken much, much longer. Critics say it has become one of the “war on terror’s” greatest failures.
