Fury at Obama's Plan

From The Times Online

November 14, 2009
Fury at plan to try September 11 mastermind near Ground Zero

(AP)Khaled Sheikh MohammedThe self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 terror attacks and four alleged co-conspirators are to be moved from Guantánamo Bay and tried in a civilian court in New York. The move was denounced angrily yesterday by victims’ relatives and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

The extraordinary announcement of the trial was made by Eric Holder, the Attorney-General, who said that he would seek the death penalty for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others when they face prosecution in a court in lower Manhattan.

The court sits a few blocks from where the twin towers collapsed after the 2001 attack and where nearly 3,000 people died. The trial will prove to be an enormous legal, political and popular test of President Obama’s methods of dealing with terrorism.

The cases will be beset by evidence problems, not least because Mohammed was tortured by the CIA soon after his capture in Pakistan. He was subjected to simulated drowning (waterboarding) 183 times in March 2003, making any evidence obtained from him then, and since, almost definitely inadmissible.

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Mr Holder said that he would not be bringing the prosecutions unless he thought the outcome would be successful. He added that he had seen evidence not in the public domain that bolstered such confidence. He said that the men would be charged with masterminding and carrying out the September 11 attacks and “I fully expect to direct prosecutors to seek the death penalty”.

Yet trials are unpredictable, and Mr Holder did not address what would happen to Mohammed if he was acquitted and presumably allowed, under US law, to walk free.

Mohammed has also claimed to have beheaded the Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl and to have been responsible for many other terror attacks.

The trial move is part of Mr Obama’s effort to close the Guantánamo Bay prison, which Mr Holder conceded was unlikely to be shut before the President’s self-imposed deadline of January 22 next year.

Shortly before Mr Holder appeared before the cameras Greg Craig, Mr Obama’s White House counsel, who had been leading the effort to close Guantánamo, resigned. His resignation letter did not mention the facility in Cuba but there has been a concerted whispering campaign against him in Washington over the failure to shut the jail.

Some families of the September 11 victims called the decision to try the plotters in a civilian US court a terrible mistake. Other victims’ relatives said that the trial would give the men a platform to “spew” their antiAmerican hatred and invective.
Ed Kowalski, of the 9/11 Families for a Secure America Foundation, said: “To allow a terrorist and a war criminal the opportunity of having US constitutional protections is a wrong thing to do and it’s never been done before. President Obama is wrong to do this.”

The President’s political opponents, who are opposed vehemently to moving any Guantánamo detainees on to US soil, let alone the mastermind of the worst crime in US history, decried the move.

John Cornyn, a Republican Texas senator, said that treating the alleged plotters like ordinary criminals was unconscionable.
John Kyl, a Senate colleague, said that the Obama Administration was “more concerned about extending legal protection to terrorists than security protection to Americans”. Peter King, a New York congressman, said the trial would make the city more of a terrorist target. Mr Holder said New York was no stranger to big terror trials. He pointed to the trial and conviction in the same court of Ramzi Yousef, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew, for the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993.

Mohammed and the four others — Waleed bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Ali Abd al-Aziz — are accused of orchestrating the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Centre and killed 2,973 people in New York on September 11, 2001.

Mr Holder said that five other Guantánamo detainees, accused of organising the al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen in 2000, which killed 17 sailors, would be tried by military tribunal. They would not be prosecuted in civilian court, like Mohammed, in part because their target was a military one, Mr Holder said.

It will be some time before Mohammed and the others will be transferred to New York. Under a recently passed law in Congress, the Obama Administration must give 45 days notice before bringing a detainee on to US soil. The charges must also be filed.

The men will be prosecuted by federal lawyers with the Southern District of New York based in lower Manhattan and the Eastern District of Virginias. They have convicted the 1993 World Trade Centre bombers, those responsible for the attacks on US embassies in Africa, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged “20th 9/11 hijacker”.
 
and i wonder how far the appeals process is gonna get trying to consider whether a fair trial was gotten because he didn't have 12 muslim peers to judge him.
 
and i wonder how far the appeals process is gonna get trying to consider whether a fair trial was gotten because he didn't have 12 muslim peers to judge him.

it will fail before it sees the light of day....that is not the standard

it is twelve peers of the community, not twelve peers of people like you
 
Sometimes the venue is moved, but it's never procedure to appoint all Muslim juries to try Muslims, all-black juries to try blacks, etc...
 
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