OK, so this news is a little old, but the White House announced that the World Trade Center conspirators who are in custody will be tried in NYC in civilian courts. There's been some outcry from conservatives over this decision. They claim to be afraid that the terrorists will get off on a technicality and that we'll end up releasing the terrorists to do this again. This is why I refuse to listen to conservative pundits. Their argument is not just self-serving fear mongering - it's hypocritical. They are rejecting the very values that they claim to love.
Trying these suspects in federal court is the moral thing to do. We, by law, don't hold people indefinitely without trial. There has to be a trial to prove the guilt of the suspects. The trial has to include the presumption of innocence. If we don't do this then we're not acting as a liberal democracy but as a totalitarian regime. The civilian nature of the court is also important. These men were not uniformed soldiers captured in battle. Their targets were not military. They attacked civilians - their crime was a civil rather than military crime. So despite the fact that the defendants will be treated more favorably, the civilian court is the place for their trial.
One other point on the nature of the court. Because the court is a federal court, the death penalty is still on the table as a punishment. I'm opposed to the death penalty on more practical rather than moral grounds. In this case it seems like a practical punishment. The lead defendant has already said that he wants to be martyred so we're unlikely to face the endless appeals and doubts that face many other death row cases. The fact that he wants to die might actually make a life in prison a better punishment. (I included the possibility of the DP as a carrot for conservatives.)
On of the biggest concerns that the right has expressed about this whole trial process is that the terrorists will "get off" on a technicality. You know, the defendants will claim that their confessions were only given under torture and the whole case will be thrown out. Two responses to this. 1:If you're so concerned about that, you probably shouldn't have supported the torture of these people in the first place.
2: There's no way that whole whole government case is built upon coerced confessions or coerced evidence. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't play one on TV, but even I know that there has to be more to the case than against the suspects than the confessions. The concern is really about the embarrassment that revelations of torture would cause the previous Republican administration which authorized the torture. I'm not sure that this should even be a concern anyway given the accused's intent to plead guilty.
Finally,this trial in civilian court, in public, with due process and a presumption of innocence, will go a long way toward repairing the image of the US around the world. When we acted unilaterally to invade Iraq, practiced extraordinary rendition, ignored the Geneva conventions and held prisoners without due process, we told the world that we we not willing to extend the basic freedoms and human rights that we claim to be the basis of our way of life to anyone else. This trial will go a long way to reversing that view. Assuming the trial appears fair and that the suspects have a chance to speak the world will see the value of the American legal system.
If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is given a chance to speak in his defense, we can expect something closer to Nat Turner's Confession or Plato's Apology than an attempt to deflect blame or claim innocence. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will get his chance to tell the side of the story that the world really hasn't heard yet. He will get to say what they did and why, and while those words will be upsetting and distasteful to many, hearing them will make the world a safer place in the long run.
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