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Saturday, February 6, 2010

If not New York, another city, for 9/11 trial
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in detention at Guantanamo Bay, according to an Internet site. (Associated Press, www.muslm.net)

 

Where the trial occurs for the accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and his four confederates is less important than having justice take its course in a civilian federal court.
 
Second thoughts are understandably being given to holding the trial in lower Manhattan. But that shouldn’t be too great a setback for President Obama’s appropriate plan to provide a fair tribunal for these terror suspects.
 
As long as these men are tried by federal judges under rules that provide for due process, their day in court will meet the president’s objective of bringing more of the nation’s anti-terror efforts under the rule of law.
 
Coupled with Obama’s plan to close the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, military prison, the civilian prosecution of terror suspects will help restore this nation’s stature as a democracy that sticks by its core values even in the face of ongoing terrorist threats.
 
The likely move of the trial away from New York, the scene of terrorists’ murder of nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, is being portrayed wrongly by Obama’s critics as proof that the whole notion of trying terror suspects in civilian courts is flawed.
 
That’s clearly absurd, since federal courts have convicted 195 international terrorists since 2001, according to figures reported by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
 
Among those convicted was Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called “blind sheikh” implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Abdel-Rahman was prosecuted successfully in a New York federal court.
 
Indeed, the move of the trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was prompted only after New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg tallied up the cost and likely disruption to the city’s vital financial district.
 
Bloomberg initially supported the decision that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. made in November to hold the trial near where the World Trade Center stood. But given the purported $1 billion cost for security for a trial in lower Manhattan’s federal court, Bloomberg’s reversal is easily understood.
 
The admitted embarrassment stemming from the whole episode points up the need for Obama’s Justice Department to check with any other city before announcing where the trial is headed. Despite Bloomberg’s initial embrace of the plan, he would have had more time to consider all the facts had Holder not sprung the news on him the very day it was announced publicly.
 
Now what? By law, the trial has to be held in a jurisdiction linked to the crimes. Given the sprawling 9/11 conspiracy, any number of states — including Pennsylvania and New Jersey — would be appropriate settings.
 
Many of those venues may have concerns about security, too, but at least one New York town — Newburgh — has offered to host. Its proximity to an Air National Guard base could make it a suitable stand-in for the Big Apple.
Posted by Inquirer Editorial Page @ 3:00 AM  Permalink | 1 comment
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 12:48 PM, 02/28/2010
    Regardless of where the trial takes place, evidence was obtained using waterboarding.. which is surely torture. How can that evidence then be used at trial? http://www.climatejournal.org/
    — climatejournal.org


1 comments
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