Only 11 years after the event, the alleged culprits for 9/11 are being put on trial. Well, at least something called a trial got underway at the end of last week - and turned into a farce, as this piece in The Atlantic so graphically details.
"America must use military tribunals to prosecute terror suspects like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, we've been told by public officials for the past 10 years, because the trials would be safer and swifter than their civilian counterparts and because the defendants, "enemy combatants" all, are not deserving of the same substantive and procedural safeguards that American criminal defendants are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
Our regular civilian courts and procedures cannot be used for that function, we've been told by those same legal, political, and military functionaries, because then the trials of the suspected terrorists would drone on endlessly, permitting the defendants to use the public forum to spread their violent, anti-American messages while generating the possibility that one or more of the defendants would be acquitted by a civilian jury."
****
"....The arraignment devolved at times into farce. The defendants acted like petulant children. The military judge acted like Lance Ito. The defense attorneys, finally given their opportunity to vent publicly about the restrictions placed upon their clients, made windy speeches instead of answering questions. It's the most important tribunal in American history since Nuremberg, and if this is how it begins I dread to think of how it will end.
Can this really be the government's aim? To conduct a proceeding that highlights the lack of respect the defendants have for the judicial process? To create a forum, finally, for the expressions of anger over the treatment the men received after they were captured? President Barack Obama refused to create a "Torture Commission" to get to the truth of our policies. Are we ready for this commission to take the place of that commission?
What's remarkable about Saturday's courtroom show is how internally discordant it was. Yes, all the participants were in the same room. And, yes, they were all theoretically invested in the same procedural endeavor. But no one, literally or figuratively, spoke the same language."
"America must use military tribunals to prosecute terror suspects like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, we've been told by public officials for the past 10 years, because the trials would be safer and swifter than their civilian counterparts and because the defendants, "enemy combatants" all, are not deserving of the same substantive and procedural safeguards that American criminal defendants are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
Our regular civilian courts and procedures cannot be used for that function, we've been told by those same legal, political, and military functionaries, because then the trials of the suspected terrorists would drone on endlessly, permitting the defendants to use the public forum to spread their violent, anti-American messages while generating the possibility that one or more of the defendants would be acquitted by a civilian jury."
****
"....The arraignment devolved at times into farce. The defendants acted like petulant children. The military judge acted like Lance Ito. The defense attorneys, finally given their opportunity to vent publicly about the restrictions placed upon their clients, made windy speeches instead of answering questions. It's the most important tribunal in American history since Nuremberg, and if this is how it begins I dread to think of how it will end.
Can this really be the government's aim? To conduct a proceeding that highlights the lack of respect the defendants have for the judicial process? To create a forum, finally, for the expressions of anger over the treatment the men received after they were captured? President Barack Obama refused to create a "Torture Commission" to get to the truth of our policies. Are we ready for this commission to take the place of that commission?
What's remarkable about Saturday's courtroom show is how internally discordant it was. Yes, all the participants were in the same room. And, yes, they were all theoretically invested in the same procedural endeavor. But no one, literally or figuratively, spoke the same language."
Comments