Legal Political Risks Abound in NYC Trial

[bonnie]

http://www.startribune.com/nation/69955752.html

This president is either the dumbest man ever to gain the white house or the most despicable

Bring them all to New York

This trial will bring all the wacko terrorist or wanta be terrorist to New York. Think of the reaction after the OJ trial. Change that to … read more wackos that think they will be seeing virgins in a little while and you have one huge problem. This administration is making things dangerous for us simple people.

WASHINGTON - Hauling the professed 9/11 mastermind and four alleged henchmen to a New York courthouse is a risky proposition for President Barack Obama. The move will bar evidence obtained under duress and complicate a case where anything short of slamdunk convictions will empower the president's critics.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision Friday to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to trial at a lower Manhattan courthouse hard by the site of the World Trade Center, whose twin towers they will be charged with destroying.

The case is likely to force the civilian federal court to confront a host of difficult issues, including rough treatment of detainees, sensitive intelligence gathering and the potential spectacle of defiant terrorists disrupting proceedings. U.S. civilian courts prohibit evidence obtained through coercion, and a number of detainees were questioned using harsh methods some call torture.

Holder insisted both the court system and the untainted evidence against the five men are strong enough to deliver a guilty verdict and the penalty he expects to seek: a death sentence for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people who were killed when four hijacked jetliners slammed into the towers, the Pentagon, and a field in western Pennsylvania.

"After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice. They will be brought to New York — to New York," Holder repeated for emphasis — "to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood."

Holder said he decided to bring Mohammed and the other four before a civilian court rather than a military commission because of the nature of the undisclosed evidence against them, because the 9/11 victims were mostly civilians and because the attacks took place on U.S. soil. Institutionally, the Justice Department, where Holder has spent most of his career, has long wanted to reassert the ability of federal courts to handle terrorism cases.

Lawyers for the accused will almost certainly try to have charges thrown out based on the rough treatment of the detainees at the hands of U.S. interrogators, including the repeated waterboarding, or simulated drowning, of Mohammed.

The question has been raised as to whether the government can make its case without using coerced confessions.

That may not matter, said Pat Rowan, a former Justice Department official.

"When you consider everything that's come out in the proceedings at Gitmo, either from the mouth of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others or from their written statements submitted to the court, it seems clear that they won't need to use any coerced confessions in order to demonstrate their guilt," said Rowan.

Held at Guantanamo since September 2006, Mohammed said in military proceedings there that he wanted to plead guilty and be executed to achieve what he views as martyrdom. In a letter from him released by the war crimes court, he referred to the attacks as a "noble victory" and urged U.S. authorities to "pass your sentence on me and give me no respite."

Holder insisted the case is on firm legal footing, but he acknowledged the political ground may be more shaky when it comes to bringing feared al-Qaida terrorists to U.S. soil.

"To the extent that there are political consequences, I'll just have to take my lumps," he said. But any political consequences will reach beyond Holder to his boss, Obama.

Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in Obama's plan to close the detention center in Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the prison by next Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

Obama said he is "absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it and my administration will insist on it."

After the announcement, political criticism and praise for the decision divided mostly along party lines.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said bringing the terrorism suspects into the U.S. "is a step backwards for the security of our country and puts Americans unnecessarily at risk."

Former President George W, Bush's last attorney general, Michael Mukasey, a former federal judge in New York, also objected that federal courts were not well suited to this task. "The plan seems to be to abandon the view that we are at war," Mukasey told a conference of conservative lawyers. He said trial in open court "creates a cornucopia of intelligence for those still at large and a circus for those being tried," and he advocated military tribunals instead.

But Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the federal courts are capable of trying high-profile terrorism cases.

"By trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system — a system respected around the world," Leahy said.

Family members of Sept. 11 victims were also divided.

"We have a president who doesn't know we're at war," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles Burlingame, had been the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. She said she was sickened by "the prospect of these barbarians being turned into victims by their attorneys."

Valerie Lucznikowska, whose nephew died at the World Trade Center, said she wouldn't care if the suspects sounded off in court — as long as the victims' families got to see them put on trial.

"What are words? It was a horrible thing to have 3,000 people killed," she said.

The five suspects are headed to New York together because they are all accused of conspiring in the 2001 attacks, and are likely to face thousands of counts of murder and conspiracy.

The government also announced five other Guantanamo detainees, including the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, would be sent to military commissions to face charges.

Holder said no decision had been made on where commission-bound detainees would go. A Navy brig in South Carolina has been high on the list of sites under consideration.

The actual transfer of the detainees from Guantanamo to New York isn't expected to happen for many more weeks because formal charges have not been filed against most of them.

Other trial locations that Holder considered, including Virginia, Washington, D.C., and a different courthouse in New York City, could end up conducting trials of other Guantanamo detainees later.

The administration has already sent one detainee, Ahmed Ghailani, to New York to face trial.

The four other detainees headed to military commissions in the United States are: Omar Khadr, Ahmed Mohammed al Darbi, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi and Noor Uthman Muhammed. Their cases are not specifically connected, but two of them are accused of plotting against or attacking U.S. military personnel.

Barry Coburn, a lawyer for Khadr, called the decision about his client "devastating and shocking."

Khadr "was 15 years old when he was detained in Afghanistan as a child soldier and has been locked away in Guantanamo ever since," he said.

[bonnie]

BONNIE

WELL LETS hope that the trails well run smoothly

dgrimm60

Civil court and military court are two different things.

What happens when the issue is made that they were not given the Miranda warning and many other issues? How confident is anyone that these scum bags will be convicted.

Day after day they will have to be transported back and forth. How safe are those around this situation.

[bonnie]

The latest version of the 'Trial of the Century'

Rick Moran,American Thinker

Talk about a feeding frenzy, the latest incarnation of the "Trial of the Century" will take place in New York City and feature all the elements that the cable nets find irresistible; high drama, low comedy, and a ready made, real life villain of extraordinary evil.

The mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be tried for his crimes at a criminal trial in New York City, according to Evan Perez of the Wall Street Journal:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and four others accused in the attacks will be put on criminal trial in New York, Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce later Friday.

The decision, described by people familiar with the matter, is part of wider announcement planned on how to bring to justice detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison. It's the first set of decisions before a Monday deadline on how to deal with the more than 200 prisoners remaining at the facility, which President Barack Obama has ordered closed.

Also expected in the announcement Friday will be plans to hold a military tribunal for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, alleged to have planned the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

Mr. Mohammed's trial in New York was widely expected since the Obama administration announced a preference to hold criminal trials, instead of military commissions for terror suspects held at Guantanamo. New York's Manhattan U.S. attorney competed with the district in northern Virginia, home to the Pentagon, to prosecute the 9/11 accused and senior al Qaeda leader. A team of prosecutors from both districts will handle the government's case, people familiar with the matter said.

Formal charges aren't expected to be announced for another few weeks. Mr. Mohammed has claimed authorship of the attacks, but he has also accused U.S. interrogators of torturing him. U.S. officials have acknowledged the use of harsh tactics, including water boarding, a technique intended to simulate drowning, which Mr. Obama and other government officials have called torture.

Criminal trials for those who make war on the United States? Still trying to be the "anti-Bush," Obama is an idiot for trying this.

Where to begin in criticizing this idiocy? If you thought the OJ Simpson trial was a circus, you'll love KSM's coming extravaganza. Lawyers, salivating over 7 figure advances for book contracts. Ditto the judge. Ditto the prosecutors. Double dittos for the jurors.

So many books are going to be written by people involved with this trial that someone would be able to open a small library to house them.

Does that matter? Only if you think the principles will act in such a way that makes for better narrative in a best seller than in the interests of justice.

Duh.

The whole point in trying these monsters through a military tribunal was to avoid all this hoopla, this modern day serial soap opera. It will no doubt be televised (there isn't a judge in the country who would deny the people their spectacle).

Another danger - a real one - is that classified information, including testimony from informants, will no doubt find its way into the media. There are many ways in which we gathered evidence against KSM including the use of "national technical means" - a euphemism for satellites and other top secret technologies, and buying off small fry al-Qaeda members to fill us in on KSM's activities.

Prediction; the trial will take 2 or more years and there is a good chance KSM will be acquitted. So much evidence will be thrown out that unless the charges are broadly drawn to include other activities of KSM against the US, he may very well skate.

I also predict George Bush will be vindicated in his decision to try these evil doers out of the public eye.