Detainees at Guantanamo Bay — including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — are in line for a coveted coronavirus vaccine.
The Pentagon confirmed to the New York Post that officials had signed an order which will see COVID-19 vaccinations “offered to all detainees and prisoners.”
The shots could be given as soon as next week.
“It will be administered on a voluntary basis and in accordance with the Department’s priority distribution plan,” spokesman Michael Howard told The Post.
That, says a retired FAA official from Massachusetts who has long called out the failures of 9/11, is “insane.” And, he added, he’s still waiting for his turn.
“I haven’t got a shot yet — and I’m 75. Our country has lost our collective mind,” said Brian Sullivan, a now-retired Federal Aviation Administration official based in Boston who warned of a terror attack at Logan just months before it happened.
“This is just incredible. The whole country is going in the wrong direction,” said Sullivan when reached at home Friday night. “This is a slap in the face to the American people. It’s outrageous.”
Offering shots to inmates, including in Massachusetts, before those 75 and older can score a vaccine has been a sore point in the early stages of the “Warp Speed” inoculation campaign.
“If you’re not shocked by this,” Sullivan added, “you’re probably a Democrat.”
As the Post first reported, 40 detainees remain at the United States military prison in Cuba, including the man accused of plotting the worst attack on U.S. soil, which claimed 2,977 innocent lives on Sept. 11, 2001.
As the Herald has previously reported, a new judge was taking over the 9/11 military tribunal of the Gitmo detainees that include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged accomplices.
All face military execution if found guilty of conspiring with the hijackers who launched a coordinated attack on the U.S. on 9/11 — including on two jets that took off from Logan International Airport that sunny morning.
They all are “alleged to be responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks. … These charges allege a long-term, highly sophisticated, organized plan by al-Qaeda to attack the United States of America,” as the Herald reported in 2008 when the charges were announced.
Other detainees are: Mohammed al-Qahtani, who officials have labeled the 20th hijacker; Ramzi Binalshibh, said to have been the main intermediary between the hijackers and al-Qaeda leaders; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew and lieutenant of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; al-Baluchi’s assistant, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, and Waleed bin Attash, a detainee known as Khallad, who investigators say selected and trained some of the 19 hijackers.
Sullivan added the terrorists should have been tried long ago. Now that they are up for a vaccine makes it all the more infuriating nearly 20 years after the attacks.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed