GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (CN) — Fifteen years and one month after 9/11, another day of technical legal arguments wrapped up in pretrial hearings for the accused. At the back of the courtroom, a woman held up a picture of the sister she lost in the attacks.
Theresa Corio pressed the paperback-sized photo of Diane Marie Urban against the glass in the galley, which separates the courtroom from the observation area where media, nongovernmental organizations and 9/11 family members can watch the proceedings.
Corio wanted to get the attention of the five accused 9/11 plotters on the other side of the mostly soundproof glass. It did not appear they noticed her or the picture of Diane, though Corio said at a press conference Friday afternoon she thought one of them glanced briefly.
Diane is believed to have been on the 78th floor of the south tower in the World Trade Center complex on 9/11. The 50-year-old Long Island woman worked for the New York tax authority.
As Corio watched the men, she noticed a difference in their attire from earlier in the week. She wondered out loud why they are allowed to have a varied wardrobe of kaffiyehs, a traditional Middle Eastern headdress, to wear to court.
"Bastards," she uttered quietly with a thick New York accent.
Corio was not the only family member to approach the glass after the hearing. About four others joined her to look at the five men they believe bear responsibility taking the lives of the loved ones they lost that day - brothers, sisters, parents and in-laws.
These hearings can get bogged down - as they did Friday morning - in small details. Do the five defense teams have a joint agreement that could undermine the proceedings at some future point? If so does the military judge need to see it? The prosecution and defense can spend months preparing to argue these points.
But those small details do not seem to matter much to the dozen or so victim family members who made the long trek from Maryland's Joint Base Andrews Air Force Base to observe the 18th round of pretrial hearings in this case.
There is still no trial date set, nearly 4 1/2 years after arraignments for the five men accused of plotting the mass killing on U.S. soil.
For the family members who stood watching the five men accused of murder, attacking civilians, terrorism, and conspiracy in the 9/11 attacks, it has taken far too long already.
"We look forward to a verdict and we look forward to justice, because it's 15 years and it's really too long," Corio told reporters at the afternoon press conference. She expressed frustration with the "minutiae" of the arguments they heard this week.
A good chunk of the hearings focused on lingering medical issues some of the five accused men face, and a protracted defense battle with the prosecution to acquire the original medical records compiled on the men during their time in the CIA's rendition, detention and interrogation program.