It would seem that the U.S. Government found itself in a conundrum when they allowed prisoners, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), to be tortured in secret prisons around the world. Once tortured, any confession or testimony from KSM, or others, could not be deemed reliable. Furthermore, the focus of the eventual proceedings would become a trial about the practice of torture, instead of being a trial about alleged terrorist crimes. That would have been untenable for the U.S. Government, which wants to avoid any and all accountability for their own crimes of torture.
In order to bypass potential discussion of torture, the latest Chief Prosecutor for the Military Commissions, Brig. General Mark Martins, found a willing witness in Majid Khan, a fellow GITMO inmate to KSM. Khan himself was not involved in the 9/11 plot. He supposedly got his information from time spent behind bars at GITMO with KSM. Kahn will be allowed to give this hearsay evidence against KSM in return for a reduced sentence. However, Khan’s sentencing won’t take place for four years. It seems the Prosecution is pinning their hopes and dreams on Khan’s upcoming performance. None of this lends credibility to an already suspect system.
Additionally, with campaigning for the upcoming Presidential elections heating up, the timing of this latest attempt at justice for 9/11 is exploitive at best.
May I just preface this by reminding the readers that torture was used endlessly to obtain confessions by the alleged 9/11 suspects held at Guantanamo. – brian @NorCal
The system of military commissions that will try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 plotters contains a dirty little secret. Hardly anybody talks about it, but it’s a key reason for concern as the apparatus becomes established.
It is this: The commissions can operate inside the United States, and they have jurisdiction over a broad range of crimes. Nothing in the Military Commissions Act limits the military trials to Guantanamo detainees, or to people captured and held abroad, or even to terrorism suspects. Nothing prevents the commissions from trying noncitizens, arrested inside the country, whom the president unilaterally designates as “unprivileged enemy belligerents.” In other words, the law permits military officers to try non-Americans from Alabama and Arkansas as well as Afghanistan.
The Obama administration’s decision last week to shift the high-profile 9/11 case from federal court is bound to move the military system toward legitimacy. The commissions lack the seasoned body of precedent that guides civilian courts, so their procedures will have to survive litigation by defense lawyers. But once the commissions gain stature and become the “new normal,” every future administration will have a ready instrument to arrest, judge and sentence wholly within the executive branch, evading the separation of powers carefully calibrated in the Constitution. The judicial branch has no role except on appeal, where only the federal court for the D.C. circuit may review a verdict and sentence after the trial.
The Obama administration has decided against civilian trials for five men linked to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Attorney General Eric Holder will announce Monday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators will be tried in military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, according to NBC News.
Holder’s press conference is expected at 2 p.m. ET.
Why the Huffington Post will report the story below and not this story here, is no mystery. The left gate-keeping media don’t want you to know that there is good reason to question the official 9/11 story….with science, observation, and experiment.
And to all the Obama supporters- Guantanamo was supposed to be closed a half year ago. (Let alone, it should never have been built, used, or funded.)
Omar Khadr appeared before Military Judge Patrick Parrish in Guantanamo Bay this week to confirm his decision to fire his American legal team. He then stated that he plans to boycott the military commissions because he considers them “unfair” and “unjust.”
In explaining his decision, Khadr read from his own handwritten prepared statement that cited his objections to a proposed plea deal that would have had him admit guilt, saying that such a move would allow the U.S. government to use him to fulfill its goals and would provide the government with an excuse for torturing and abusing him as a child. Khadr asked how he could get justice from a process like the one found in the military commissions.
The video above is from this weekends CBS airing of Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer.
Eric Holder cites ”funding” as a hold up and concern in the reasoning for the delays in the 9/11 suspect trials.
There is however, no concern expressed for funding and continuing the War of Terror in the Middle East, nor any other military operation around the GLOBE that procures land or development rights for Congress’ constituent’s sponsers.
The simple, hard fact is that anyone held at Guantanamo did not ever have the ability to do this:
Below we have a letter written by the ACLU, I found it on the Common Dreams website:
In February, as the Justice Department’s plan for civilian terrorism trials in Manhattan was collapsing, Obama administration officials said they soon would choose an alternative venue for the case that promised to secure justice for the Sept. 11 attacks.
In March, officials said that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, probably would be tried before a military tribunal and that a decision appeared to be imminent.
In April, Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress that the White House-led review of the case would be completed in “a number of weeks.”
A group is calling for signers to its petition that would have the 9/11 Conspirators trial held in New York. This is from their website:
More than 2,600 people were murdered in New York City on 9/11. The five men accused of planning the 9/11 attacks have been in US custody for several years but have still not been brought to justice. Why? Because the Bush administration held the men for years in secret prisons, and then insisted on trying the men in an untested military commission.
Now the Obama administration is considering holding the trial in a commission, too . These military commissions are not only lacking in fundamental due process guarantees, they are extremely inefficient. Since 9/11, military commissions have tried only three terrorism suspects. US federal courts, by contrast, have successfully completed more than 400 terrorism cases in that time.
Obama said everything he needed to say to have millions of people vote for his Presidency, none of it, absolutely none of it ever meant anything. I hope those who voted for him start taking their bumber stickers off soon, it makes me sick to see all of this false hope; it is as bad as seeing John McCain stickers or the occasional W’ 04 stickers.
The appointment of a well-respected ex-Navy lawyer to oversee war-crime trials is being seen in military legal circles as a sign the Obama administration might reverse its decision to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to New York for a civilian trial.
At the same time, a pending speedy-trial ruling in a second terror case in New York could give Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. an escape route through which he could switch the trial of Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) from federal court back to a military system set up by former President George W. Bush and Congress.
In February, the White House and Mr. Holder left open the possibility of a war-crimes trial for Shaikh Mohammed, the admitted 9/11 attack mastermind. This would reverse Mr. Holder’s much-criticized decision in November to bring the al Qaeda heavyweight to the federal court system, where he would enjoy more rights and perhaps a media forum for anti-American propaganda.
A month after the administration signaled a reversal, the Pentagon, with significant White House input, named retired Navy Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald as the war-crimes convening authority. In that post, the Navy’s former top lawyer is the official who brings criminal charges, selects jury pools, approves defense- lawyer expenses and makes other rulings.
Arguing that a Pentagon order banning four journalists from covering military commissions at Guantanamo Bay was illegal and unconstitutional, The Miami Herald and two Canadian news outlets appealed on Wednesday.
While covering a hearing last week to determine the admissibility of confessions made by Canadian detainee Omar Khadr, four journalists from The Herald, which is owned by McClatchy, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and Can-West Newspapers of Canada printed the name of a witness who had been identified at the hearing as “Interrogator No. 1.” The witness, Joshua Claus, had been convicted by a U.S. military jury of detainee abuse in 2005 and sentenced to five months in prison. His role as Khadr’s interrogator had been known since 2008, when it was first revealed by a judge at Guantanamo. He later gave an on-the-record interview to the Toronto Star.
“The public is deprived of the very skilled reporting of journalists who have been covering this story for a long time,” she said.
A story from McClatchy Newspapers, which owns the Miami Herald, said Rosenberg has covered every military commission hearing at Guantanamo Bay, with the exception of one week, since the proceedings began in 2004.
The Pentagon has banned four reporters from covering court proceedings on the U.S. naval station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because they published the name of a former U.S. Army interrogator.
The journalists violated ground rules by reporting the name of a protected witness, Defense Department spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said.
Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg, Globe and Mail reporter Paul Koring, Toronto Star reporter Michelle Shephard and Canwest News Service reporter Steven Edwards were notified by Defense Department officials Thursday.
US Republicans, in an effort to avoid a public civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, are turning up the heat on Attorney General Eric Holder. Why?
First, for those who need a primer on their “War on Terror” ancient history, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks,” according to the 9/11 Commission Report sanctioned by the Bush administration.
Mohammed, accused of orchestrating a number of high-profile attacks, including the grisly decapitation murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was charged in February 2008 with war crimes by a US military tribunal and will be summarily executed if found guilty. But there is just one problem with all of this: not even the CIA is unanimous in the belief that KSM is their man.
Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, and the author of “See No Evil”, told Time magazine back in 2007 that “the Administration [of George W. Bush] is trying to blame KSM for Al-Qaeda terrorism, leading us to believe we’ve caught the master terrorist and that Al-Qaeda, and especially the ever-elusive bin Laden, is no longer a threat to the US.”
Baer went on to say that “there is a major flaw in that marketing strategy.”
“On the face of it, KSM – as he is known inside the government – comes across as boasting, at times mentally unstable. It’s also clear he is making things up. I’m told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl’s execution but was in fact not the person who killed him,” Baer writes.
“The American Bar Association believes that Article III courts are the preferred forum for trying detainees accused of criminal responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on the United States.”
Robert Gibbs was on MSNBC recently and spoke about alleged 9/11 hijacker Kalid Sheikh Mohammed. No matter where the trial is held, “he is likely to be executed” Gibbs said. Unfortunately, legal concepts like ”innocent until proven guilty” are a far cry from even our highest officials minds.
Gibbs was echoing comments from many on both sides of the political aisle. From Glenn Beck to Bill O’Reilly, President Obama and President Bush, everyone wants to “rid the world of the evil-doers’.” Kalid Sheikh Mohammed was allegedly arrested in Pakistan on March 1st, 2003.
The 2005 Bradbury memo revealed the waterboarding routine for KSM in 2003; he was waterboarded 183 times in one month alone. Whatever happened in the four years between his alleged arrest in Pakistan and alleged confession at Guantanamo, the information he did or did not provide has not:
Posted by Brian 
