Legal Commentary

9/11 Detainees to Plead Guilty in Military Commission Trials

By Jeralyn

Update: AP article here. They made their decision based on Obama's election to the Presidency. My translation: They don't want to be moved to federal court where they would be more likely to get life in a Supermax prison than the death penalty, and if they got the death penalty, face years in prison before it was carried out.

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other detainees facing the death penalty in military commission trials decided today to plead guilty. Human Rights Watch responds:

"What should have been a major victory in holding the 9/11 defendants accountable for terrible crimes has been tainted by torture and an unfair military commissions process," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. "These five men are known to have been mistreated and tortured during their years in CIA custody, including the acknowledged waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed."

More....

HRW is calling on the judge to conduct an extensive inquiry into the voluntariness of the pleas.

My view: If you can't trust in the integrity of the process, the verdict has no credibility. The trial process provided for by the Military Commissions Act is so fundamentally flawed, any guilty pleas cannot be trusted.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 08, 2008 (boomark / email).