"Accused 9/11 plotters to be tried blocks from ground zero"

The Ottawa Citizen ran an article on November 14, 2009 captioned, “Accused 9/11 plotters to be tried blocks from ground zero.” In that article it states the US attorney general announced on Friday that Khalid Sherikh Mohammed who confessed to being the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centers in NYC will be tried in a federal court in New York City. Khalid Mohammed has been held in Guantanamo Bay and was expected to be previously tried by a military court. The Attorney General said he had, “elected to forgo military trials,” because he was confident of a, “successful outcome.” He also noted the families of those killed in the 9/11 attacks, “deserve the opportunity to see the perpetrators held accountable.”

Although human rights groups are pleased with the decision, others feel the NY trials make the city a target for more terrorism. Others feel the rights granted in federal court might result in Mohammed’s release because of the brutal interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay.

It is my opinion that the US Attorney General didn’t have much of an option in making his decision at all. President Barack Obama promised in his presidential campaign to close Guantanamo Bay. In order to do that, he needs to deal with the prisoners being held there, about 215 detainees.

The world will be watching this trial. It will be a measure of many things including Barack Obama’s presidency. Human right’s activists will applaud this more but I have no doubt that Obama will suffer backlash from a big part of America if for any reason Mohammed is released. Similarly, his presidency may also take a negative turn if New York does suffer another terrorist attack because Mohammed is on trial there. There is no doubt that if terrorists could pull off another attack on NYC especially during the trial.

Legal experts and democratic countries will watch to see if someone who has been detained for years without a trial, who suffered brutal interrogation can be fairly tried by a jury in the location where the greatest recent American disaster occurred. This will be a world spectacle.

The Citizen article raises another concern about the US’s ability to give a fair judgment in other than a military setting because of a comment from the pentagon and justice department officials who said privately, “…even in the unlikely case of an acquittal, other options would enable authorities to avoid releasing the defendant into the general US population.”

This makes me wonder, has Mohammed gone insane because of isolation at Guantanamo Bay, and is the idea of trying him at all just a sham? Or, is this like the last article I blogged about, a matter where rendition might solve the problem of the wrong verdict resulted.

Although I fully understand and in fact support the feelings of Americans who want the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack to be held accountable for the disaster, it is hard to hold the image of the US law enforcement up as a model of democratic enlightenment.
A year and a little more into Obama’s presidency, I think these cases will start to shape the story of the man which will go down in history more than Obama’s charismatic rise to the office of President.