It is a Friday and President Obama is abroad. What better time for the President and the Department of Justice to announce that 9/11 coordinator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and some of his fellow terrorists will be tried in a civilian court in New York City?
Yesterday, I wrote about the curious connection that major Obama and ACORN supporter Bruce Ratner has to the Department of Justice – the very department that refuses to initiate a criminal trial of ACORN. It just so happens that Bruce Ratner’s brother, Michael Ratner, shares the terrorist coddling sympathies of Attorney General Eric Holder. As Michelle Malkin documents, Holder not only pushed for the pardoning of actual terrorists in his last stint at DOJ, but he was also a senior partner at a law firm representing detainees at Guantanamo. While Michael Ratner has not represented Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he did represent a handful of terrorists and won them the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts under habeas corpus. This is just one of many legal “victories” that have paved the way for folks like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be tried in civilian court on our soil.
This particular example highlights the underlying notion that terrorists should be privy to the same rights as United States citizens. In this instance, President Obama did in fact exercise his discretion (if you can call it that) by allowing the trial to take place in civilian court. Attorney Brian Levi serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University. As Levi noted today, “As a legal matter President Obama could very well also have tried these five detainees before military tribunals, as five others are…”
There is longstanding precedent for the use of military tribunals to deal with the difficult situation of unlawful combatants captured in a time of war. As Arthur Herman wrote in Commentary, this is the original path the Department of Justice and the Bush administration sought:
The rules on Gitmo detention and on interrogation constituted a valiant attempt to deal with an unprecedented legal situation. The same was true of the system of military “commissions” or tribunals for trying suspects at Gitmo. Here the Justice Department largely followed the precedent of tribunals used by the American military during World War II, and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1942 decision Ex Parte Quirin.
As 9/11 victim relatives Debra Burlingame and Tim Sumner lay out in a letter and petition to President Obama, and as anyone who has watched an episode of Law and Order can surmise, there are a host of thorny issues that could arise in the civilian trial of an unlawful military combatant. These detainees weren’t Mirandized. Secondly, their extended detention, a defense attorney could claim, was in violation of the assurance of a swift and speedy trial. Furthermore, given that they were caught on a battlefield, the chain of evidence is not up to par with the (rightly) strict standards of our civilian courts. Could their cases be dismissed outright? These are legitimate legal concerns raised with these cases.
The actual threat to New York City that high value detainees bring is even more frightening. The security and logistics necessary to bring these people to New York and secure them there are both expensive and risky. If only we had a special place where we could keep these guys safely away from American cities and citizens, away from terrorist stunts to release them, and still give them three square Halal meals a day, a copy of the Koran, art classes and inter-cell block soccer leagues. Oh wait…we do, but the President is closing it.
I have the solution. Perhaps Bruce Ratner is willing to donate a portion of his real estate empire to house Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his buddies in New York. Maybe he could come up with another eminent domain-stimulus-ACORN scheme where he doesn’t even have to pay as much for it or where he could even turn a profit? Now that’s a win-win-win!
In all seriousness, what’s a concerned citizen to do? As with any policy concern, you can call your elected officials to respectfully register your opinion. Then you can sign the petition headed for President Obama’s desk.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.