Taking 9/11 Cases to NYC Draws Ire, Praise

Victims' Kin and Lawmakers Divided over Decision to Haul 9/11 Mastermind, 4 Others to NYC Courthouse; Trial Poses Legal Risks

(CBS/AP)  Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be brought to trial in a civilian federal courthouse in New York drew a sharply divided reaction by families of the victims and lawmakers.

Congressional Republicans expressed outrage over Holder's decision.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said bringing the terrorism suspects into the U.S. "is a step backwards for the security of our country and puts Americans unnecessarily at risk."

Former President George W, Bush's last attorney general, Michael Mukasey, a former federal judge in New York, also objected that federal courts were not well suited to this task. "The plan seems to be to abandon the view that we are at war," Mukasey told a conference of conservative lawyers. He said trial in open court "creates a cornucopia of intelligence for those still at large and a circus for those being tried," and he advocated military tribunals instead.

But Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the federal courts are capable of trying high-profile terrorism cases.

"By trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system - a system respected around the world," Leahy said.

Family members of Sept. 11 victims were also divided.

Judith Reiss, who clutched a photo of her dead son during a recent visit to Guantanamo, thinks the al Qaeda suspects may cause more pain once they're moved to New York, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr.

"They are going to be able to sit and gloat over what they have done," Reiss said.

"We have a president who doesn't know we're at war," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles Burlingame, had been the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. She said she was sickened by "the prospect of these barbarians being turned into victims by their attorneys."

But John Cartier, who lost his brother James on 9/11, told Orr he is looking forward to confronting the suspects.

"Our family is looking for justice," he said. "Look these guys right in the eye and maybe have a few choice words for them."

Valerie Lucznikowska, whose nephew died at the World Trade Center, said she wouldn't care if the suspects sounded off in court - as long as the victims' families got to see them put on trial.

"What are words? It was a horrible thing to have 3,000 people killed," she said.

Hauling the professed 9/11 mastermind and four alleged henchmen to a New York courthouse is a risky proposition for President Barack Obama. The move will bar evidence obtained under duress and complicate a case where anything short of slamdunk convictions will empower the president's critics.

Holder announced the decision Friday to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to trial at a lower Manhattan courthouse hard by the site of the World Trade Center, whose twin towers they will be charged with destroying.

The case is likely to force the civilian federal court to confront a host of difficult issues, including rough treatment of detainees, sensitive intelligence gathering and the potential spectacle of defiant terrorists disrupting proceedings. U.S. civilian courts prohibit evidence obtained through coercion, and a number of detainees were questioned using harsh methods some call torture.

Still, CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen says the government can prevail.

"The fact that KSM is going to stand trial in federal court in New York means the government has extra evidence that doesn't rely on his statements and it feels it can win a case without this waterboarding information," Cohen said.

Holder insisted both the court system and the untainted evidence against the five men are strong enough to deliver a guilty verdict and the penalty he expects to seek: a death sentence for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people who were killed when four hijacked jetliners slammed into the towers, the Pentagon, and a field in western Pennsylvania.

"After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice. They will be brought to New York - to New York," Holder repeated for emphasis - "to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood."

Holder said he decided to bring Mohammed and the other four before a civilian court rather than a military commission because of the nature of the undisclosed evidence against them, because the 9/11 victims were mostly civilians and because the attacks took place on U.S. soil. Institutionally, the Justice Department, where Holder has spent most of his career, has long wanted to reassert the ability of federal courts to handle terrorism cases.

Lawyers for the accused will almost certainly try to have charges thrown out based on the rough treatment of the detainees at the hands of U.S. interrogators, including the repeated waterboarding, or simulated drowning, of Mohammed.

The question has been raised as to whether the government can make its case without using coerced confessions.

That may not matter, said Pat Rowan, a former Justice Department official.

"When you consider everything that's come out in the proceedings at Gitmo, either from the mouth of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others or from their written statements submitted to the court, it seems clear that they won't need to use any coerced confessions in order to demonstrate their guilt," said Rowan.

Held at Guantanamo since September 2006, Mohammed said in military proceedings there that he wanted to plead guilty and be executed to achieve what he views as martyrdom. In a letter from him released by the war crimes court, he referred to the attacks as a "noble victory" and urged U.S. authorities to "pass your sentence on me and give me no respite."

Holder insisted the case is on firm legal footing, but he acknowledged the political ground may be more shaky when it comes to bringing feared al Qaeda terrorists to U.S. soil.

"To the extent that there are political consequences, I'll just have to take my lumps," he said. But any political consequences will reach beyond Holder to his boss, Obama.

Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in Obama's plan to close the detention center in Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the prison by next Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

Obama said he is "absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it and my administration will insist on it."

The five suspects are headed to New York together because they are all accused of conspiring in the 2001 attacks, and are likely to face thousands of counts of murder and conspiracy.

The government also announced five other Guantanamo detainees, including the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, would be sent to military commissions to face charges.

Holder said no decision had been made on where commission-bound detainees would go. A Navy brig in South Carolina has been high on the list of sites under consideration.

The actual transfer of the detainees from Guantanamo to New York isn't expected to happen for many more weeks because formal charges have not been filed against most of them.

Other trial locations that Holder considered, including Virginia, Washington, D.C., and a different courthouse in New York City, could end up conducting trials of other Guantanamo detainees later.

The administration has already sent one detainee, Ahmed Ghailani, to New York to face trial.

The four other detainees headed to military commissions in the United States are: Omar Khadr, Ahmed Mohammed al Darbi, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi and Noor Uthman Muhammed. Their cases are not specifically connected, but two of them are accused of plotting against or attacking U.S. military personnel.

Barry Coburn, a lawyer for Khadr, called the decision about his client "devastating and shocking."

Khadr "was 15 years old when he was detained in Afghanistan as a child soldier and has been locked away in Guantanamo ever since," he said.

[searingtruth]

"We became victims of our own crime."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave

[50BMS13]

OBAMA HAS CALCULATED AND OBAMA HAS DECIDED! He will make this trial in NY about Bush and the US's violation of these gentlemen's civil rights. In a military tribunal they would have been found guilty already and have been sentenced to death. Now that Obama has mad this a CIVIL matter, they WILL WALK! I know law, that's all I'm going to say. They have had their civil rights violated by George Bush. OBAMA HAS JUST MADE THIS ALL ABOUT GEORGE BUSH AND HIS ADMINISTTRATIONS TACTICS OF INTERROGATION. Obama is a hero in the muslim world tonight with this news release. The whole case will now be centered on Bush and tactics and civil rights abuse rather than guilt or implicitness. They have been in jail for over 6 years with no trial and admissions only under waterboarding and playing barney real loud with the lights on 24/7. Not only will they walk, THEY WILL SUE FOR MILLIONS AND WIN! All confidential and classified tactics at Guantanimo will be released and exposed thus breeding more terror and hatred for us. Obama has found a way to shift focus on his lack of ability to get anything done, to putting the focus on Bush and waterboarding. OBAMA=DANGEROUS

[searingtruth]

"I join cordially in admiring and revering the Constitution of the United States, the result of the collected wisdom of our country. That wisdom has committed to us the important task of proving by example that a government, if organized in all its parts on the Representative principle unadulterated by the infusion of spurious elements, if founded, not in the fears & follies of man, but on his reason, on his sense of right, on the predominance of the social over his dissocial passions, may be so free as to restrain him in no moral right, and so firm as to protect him from every moral wrong."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Amos Marsh, November 20, 1801

A Future of the Brave

[searingtruth]

"When everything is secret, everything is legal."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave

[jgg000015]

by rafterman1 November 14, 2009 10:04 PM EST
The term "enemey combatant" is made up as an excuyse for pi$$ing on our Constitution. When are you going to get that through your head?



uhhh, when are you going to get it through your thick head that they are actually ENEMY COMBATANTS?

[searingtruth]

"Truth is defined by the weakest of us who must suffer through it."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave

[Empire-George]

by rafterman1 November 14, 2009 10:04 PM EST
The term "enemey combatant" is made up as an excuyse for pi$$ing on our Constitution. When are you going to get that through your head?
__________

Ok, then select another word to define them...but the point is, that this is not a simple "criminal" but a direct large scale organized attack on our military headquarters at the Pentagon, an attempt at our Capital, and a sucessful attack on our financial centers in NY....so what is the justification for trying him in NY, which opens up the possibility of jury nullifation and them skating....military attacks on our country, shouldn't be dealt with in a civilan court, but a classified military tribunal, to retain the secrecy and intel, against the enemy, instead of a mockery trial....do you get my point?

[mnguyen4]

I am in complete agreement with President Obama (a former constitutional law professor) decision to try the Gitmo detainees in a civilian court. These men were civilians, and they were not members of any military organization. A civilian court deals with matters in the protection of life and property, and it hands out sentences to people who are responsible for taking the life of another human being. Timothy McVeigh and the DC snipers were both tried in a civilian court in charges of committing acts of terrorism in the United States even when they were former members of the military.

A military court or a court martial deals with different matters like preserving the integrity of the Chain of Command, the codes of conduct of its members. A military court, unlike the civilian court, does condone in many cases the taking of life and the destruction of property in a war situation. People brought under a military court are often charged of disobeying their superior officers. During the Vietnam War, Lieutenant Calley?s platoon killed over 500 South Vietnamese civilians in the village My Lai in 1968. The military court acquitted everyone, except Lieutenant Calley who served just 3 years sentence of house arrest.

Also, people brought under a military tribunal are captured enemy soldiers charged with sabotage and spy activities. Such was the case of captured German soldiers disguised as US MP?s during the Battle of the Bulge. In short, the justice system in America assigns the appropriate judicial system to try people committing acts of crime.

[jschmidt27]

mari1963-You are an insensitive clod. You have no idea how deeply the attack was felt by people in NY and around the area. Many of us knew someone in the towers, had worked in the towers, seen them built or had eaten in the restaurant in the towers. Now the cretins that help take them down will enjoy the rights of a US citizen. This is a big mistake.

[salmoc44]

Do you have any scientific polling information that shows that a majority of New Yorkers don't want these trials to take place? I bet you don't.

[50BMS13]

OBAMA HAS CALCULATED AND OBAMA HAS DECIDED! He wil make this trial in NY about Bush and the US's violation of these gentlemen's civil rights. In a military tribunal they would be guilty already and sentenced to death. Now that Obama has made this a CIVIL MATTER, they will walk. I know law. All I'm going to say. They have had their civil rights violated by George Bush. OBAMA HAS JUST MADE THIS ALL ABOUT GEORGE BUSH AND HIS ADMINISTRATIONS TACTICS OF INTERROGATION. Obama is a hero in the muslim world tonight with this news release. The whole case will now be about Bush and tactics, not the crimes they planned in. They have been in jail for 6 years before a trial with confessions under waterboarding. NOT ONLY WILL THEY WALK, THEY WILL SUE FOR MILLIONS AND WIN. All the guantanamo tactics top secret or not will be released. The world will hate us more. Obama has found a way to deflect attention to his lack of progress on anything to releasing vital classified information.