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9/11 Terrorists to Have Criminal Case; Holder to Graham: ?It Depends?

By Phil

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 update:

Via RightSoup.com, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) took Attorney General Eric Holder to task over KSM and the “criminal theory” versus the “enemy combatant” theory.

As you watch the video, ask yourself this question: If Mr. Holder and the Administration’s policy is to survey the evidence before deciding whether or not an enemy combatant will be tried in a military tribunal or civilian Court, what does that do to our assets on the ground? How do you take into custody someone who may or may not need to be read their Miranda rights? And what if they are told that they have the right to be silent? So much for information-gathering, eh?

See also the ChicagoBoyz article on “How Obama is Bringing Martial Law to America.”

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 update:

Could this be KSM’s opening statement (h/t LegalInsurrection)?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Opening Statement?

As attorney William Jacobson points out:

Here is an excerpt:

With regards to these nine accusations that you are putting us on trial for; to us, they are not accusations. To us they are badges of honor, which we carry with pride….

We ask you; who initiated the attacks on civilians? Who is attacking civilian objects? And who is causing grave bodily harm against civilians? Is it us, or is it you?

…. was it not you that attacked an entire population in Iraq, destroying civilian targets and its infrastructure? Was it not you that has killed one million Iraqi children caused by your oppressed economic sanctions, which you imposed after the first Gulf War?

In fact, it was you who had wiped out two entire cities off the face of the earth and killed roughly half a million people in a few minutes and caused grave bodily harm by nuclear radiation? Did you forget about your nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

You are the last nation that has the right to speak about civilians and killing civilians. You are professional criminals, with all the meaning the words carry. Therefore, we kill treat you the same. We will attack you, just like you have attacked us, and whomever initiated the attacks is the guilty party.

Legally worthless. Eerily similar to political rhetoric we hear in this country. Possibly music to the ears of a secretly sympathic juror.

But to KSM, the chance to give such a lecture in the shadows of the former Twin Towers, a short distance from where thousands of infidels died, in a room face to face with the loved ones who still mourn …. to him, it will be priceless.

Monday, November 16, 2009 update:

New York Governor David Paterson is being reported by WCBS TV 2 that holding a civilian trial in DC for terrorists is “a decision I would not have made:”

NEW YORK (CBS) — Gov. David Paterson openly criticized the White House on Monday, saying he thought it was a terrible idea to move alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists to New York for trial. 

“This is not a decision that I would have made. I think terrorism isn’t just attack, it’s anxiety and I think you feel the anxiety and frustration of New Yorkers who took the bullet for the rest of the country,” he said. 

Paterson’s comments break with Democrats, who generally support the President’s decision. 

“Our country was attacked on its own soil on September 11, 2001 and New York was very much the epicenter of that attack. Over 2,700 lives were lost,” he said. “It’s very painful. We’re still having trouble getting over it. We still have been unable to rebuild that site and having those terrorists so close to the attack is gonna be an encumbrance on all New Yorkers.”

And while the SECDEF is doing his best to stop the leaking, RedState posts that “The Last Time We Tried A Terrorist In New York, Classified Documents Went To Al Qaeda:”

As James Galyean noted, and this is well worth repeating:

Documents from that discovery production [ in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case ], which were never supposed to be provided to anyone outside the defense team, were later found in an al-Qaeda hideout.

Further, let?s be honest ? we know that no President of the United States would chance a man like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed going free. Barack Obama would not risk a civilian trial without being sure of a conviction. This then amounts to a show trial, but one where the prosecutors will have to comply with discovery requirements that will potentially put classified material into the hands of Al Qaeda.

It has happened before.

And for any who are still stuck on the rush to judgment, AllAmericanBlogger posts a fine comparison between Major Hasan’s actions and those of Abdul Walid Hamid.

Sunday, November 15, 2009 update:

Semantics or stupidity? You can only choose one and there’s no in-between as Mr. Obama said the following back in 2006 RE: KSM (h/t HotAirPundit):

Obama: “I think there are alot of dangerous people, particularly dangerous are people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, ironically those are the guy who are gonna get real military procedures…The irony of the underlying bill as it’s written is someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is gonna get basically a full military trial” [emphases from site]

And apparently a group of individuals have come together to form a group making an attempt to block the trial from happening in NYC (yesterday via FreeRepublic):

As you know by now, President Obama and Eric Holder are planning on bringing the 9/11 masterminds toNYC for trial.  There is a massive grassroots movement to block this -- retired members of the FDNY, theBravest.com, have partnered with 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong and America and Keep America Safe to bring attention to this travesty.  They are recruiting the families & friends of the FDNY to combat this ill-conceived policy of the current administration.  They are asking that all of America join in with them by signing their petition at the following link:

http://www.thebravest.com/fdny.htm

Over the past 48 hours, 60,000 people have signed the petition. l heard the founder of thebravest.com on a NYC talk show tonight -- he was in the WTC when it was hit, he is passionate about this, he is ready to go to the wall over this -- he needs us to stand with him.

—-

The Obama Administration is preparing to bring 5 of the terrorists behind the 9/11 attack to New York city to undergo a civilian, criminal trial, where the chief murder is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (IWatchObama has a run-down on the terrorists involved).

That is correct. Not a military tribunal, though HotAir.com reports that other Gitmo prisoners — such as USS Cole attacker Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — will face a military tribunal. They also note that while some may be justifying the Cole attack as purely military, the 9/11 attackers also hit the Pentagon, so why not bring all of these individuals under the jurisdiction of a tribunal?

What’s more, since a civilian Court would be given jurisdiction, that means that KSM shall have all of the Constitutional rights at trial that any other American citizen has. The really scary part? KSM has already admitted that he’s guilty. So exactly what would he be defending against except the “evil” American government?

And it gets even weirder still. By trying KSM as a criminal in civilian Court, so many things could potentially occur — individuals associated with the Court could get threatened, New York city becomes a “live” target (once again), and, God forbid, the case could actually get thrown out on a technicality — something that readers of this site are all too familiar with concerning the Judiciary! That certainly wouldn’t make some 9/11 victims’ families too happy.

As WashingtonExaminer.com poses in their “The question of the Day:”

Ask yourself this question: Suppose that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial results in an acquittal or a hung jury. Would the Obama administration really let him go? If so, they are crazy. If not, why are they holding the trial?

Naturally, GOP leaders in Washington are all-out furious over the Administration’s decision. And the Woman Who Would Be President ™ has quite forthrightly weighed in on this story as well, especially the following:

Criminal defense attorneys will now enter into delaying tactics and other methods in the hope of securing some kind of win for their “clients.” The trial will afford Mohammed the opportunity to grandstand and make use of his time in front of the world media to rally his disgusting terrorist cohorts. It will also be an insult to the victims of 9/11, as Mohammed will no doubt use the opportunity to spew his hateful rhetoric in the same neighborhood in which he ruthlessly cut down the lives of so many Americans.

It is crucially important that Americans be made aware that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks may walk away from this trial without receiving just punishment because of a “hung jury” or from any variety of court room technicalities. If we are stuck with this terrible Obama Administration decision, I, like most Americans, hope that Mohammed and his co-conspirators are convicted. Hang ?em high.

A site that tracks Gov. Palin’s Facebook postings and her goings-on posted the following stark verbiage regarding Attorney General Eric Holder and the rest of the Administration:

This doesn?t just lay at the feet of Barack Obama though. Every single member of the United States Senate who voted in favor of confirming this man as Attorney General is guilty as well. Holder?s radical bent was well known, and well discussed before he was confirmed. It would have been very easy for the Republicans to have blocked Holder?s confirmation from ever coming to a vote. Instead, many actually voted to confirm this traitor.

I promise you, the democrats have blocked more than a few Republican nominees over the years, with no good reason, except petty politics. Allowing Eric Holder to be confirmed was a serious lack of judgment, and yet another reason there needs to be a mass turn over in Congress. We need to throw a bunch of these lifetime “you scratch my back, I?ll scratch yours” politicians out of this office, and replace them with commons sense leaders.

It?s bad enough to have a Congress full of inept, corrupt, hangers on, but this latest act of stupidity has the potential to bring great harm to our nation. The act of confirming Eric Holder proves these Republican Senators in incapable of using good judgment.

To see a full list of who voted to confirm Holder, those who needs to start looking for a new job, look here. …

This is simply outrageous. Either Obama knew this guy, and his terrorist ways, or he has the most incompetent vetting staff in the world. Either way, our nation?s security has been compromised at the very highest level.

But still not as outrageous as bringing the 9/11 terrorists to American soil and civilian court.

Will this finally be the straw that breaks the camels back? Will this finally be the act of treachery that will cause the American people to demand that Barack Obama resign and take the rest of his insane administration with him?

So, why is this occurring? That is, why is it that the federal government is wanting a trial in civilian court? As Michelle Malkin recently tweeted, it may literally be as simple as political payback (via NRO):

This summer, I theorized that Attorney General Eric Holder ? and his boss ? had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution. The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department’s obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the “reckoning” that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. It would be too politically explosive for Obama/Holder to do the dirty work of charging Bush administration officials; but as new revelations from investigations and declassifications are churned out, Leftist lawyers use them to urge European and international tribunals to bring “torture” and “war crimes” indictments. Thus, administration cooperation gives Obama’s base the reckoning it demands but Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions.

Today’s announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda. Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses ? intelligence sources ? must expose themselves and their secrets. …

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America. Since that will be their “defense,” the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and ? depending on what judge catches the case ? they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see ? in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

On top of all of this, as Atlanta’s AM750WSB’s Washington correspondent Jamie Dupree points out on his blog, the 2010 Defense Authorization Act (HR2647) appears to spell out rather specific conditions regarding transferring Gitmo detainees to American soil:

SEC. 1041. LIMITATION ON USE OF FUNDS FOR THE TRANSFER OR RELEASE OF INDIVIDUALS DETAINED AT UNITED STATES NAVAL STATION, GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA.

(a) Release Prohibition- During the period beginning on October 1, 2009, and ending on December 31, 2010, the Secretary of Defense may not use any of the amounts authorized to be appropriated in this Act or otherwise available to the Department of Defense to release into the United States, its territories, or possessions, any individual described in subsection (e).

(b) Transfer Limitation- During the period beginning on October 1, 2009, and ending on December 31, 2010, the Secretary of Defense may not use any of the amounts authorized to be appropriated in this Act or otherwise available to the Department of Defense to transfer any individual described in subsection (e) to the United States, its territories, or possessions, until 45 days after the President has submitted to the congressional defense committees the plan described in subsection (c).

(c) Comprehensive Plan Required- The President shall submit to the congressional defense committees a plan for the disposition of each individual described in subsection (e) who is proposed to be transferred to the United States, its territories, or possessions. Such plan for each individual shall include, at a minimum--

(1) an assessment of the risk that the individual described in subsection (e) poses to the national security of the United States, its territories, or possessions;

(2) a proposal for the disposition of each such individual;

(3) the measures to be taken to mitigate any risks described in paragraph (1);

(4) the location or locations at which the individual will be held under the proposal for disposition required by paragraph (2);

(5) the costs associated with executing the plan, including technical and financial assistance required to be provided to State and local law enforcement agencies, if necessary, to carry out the plan;

(6) a summary of the consultation required in subsection (d); and

(7) a certification by the Attorney General that under the plan the individual poses little or no security risk to the United States, its territories, or possessions.

(d) Consultation Required- The President shall consult with the chief executive of the State, the District of Columbia, or the territory or possession of the United States to which the disposition in subsection (c)(2) includes transfer to that State, District of Columbia, or territory or possession.

(e) Detainees Described- An individual described in this subsection is any individual who is located at United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as of October 1, 2009, who--

(1) is not a citizen of the United States; and

(2) is--

(A) in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense; or

(B) otherwise under detention at the United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

[emphasis mine]

Some may say that, within context, this has to do with actually shutting down Gitmo (a totally unrelated issue) versus merely transferring detainees from Gitmo to some holding facility in the US with the understanding that they may be brought back to Gitmo. Yet, per another tweet:

From what Senate staffers are telling us, if the White House has a new GTMO plan, then they can transfer detainees

I think that former New York city Mayor Rudy Giuliani provides the best commentary in the following two videos:

-Phil

AxXiom’s Rules for Activists

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Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on November 18, 2009 (boomark / email).