9-11 NYC Trials May Pose Legal & National Security Risks

Do 9-11 Terrorism Trials place NYC in danger?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

G.O.P. is outraged over 9-11 NYC Trials.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

9/11 mastermind to stand trial in N.Y. According to officials, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will stand trial in a civilian court. A Morning Meeting panel discusses.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

9-11 NYC Trials to bring Healing or will it re-open old Wounds?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

NYC trial of 9/11 suspects poses legal risks


In the biggest trial for the age of Terrorism, the professed 9/11 mastermind and four alleged henchmen will be hauled before a civilian court on American soil, barely a thousand yards from the site of the World Trade Center's twin towers they are accused of destroying.

Attorney General Eric 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.

It's a risky move. Trying the men in civilian court will bar evidence obtained under duress and complicate a case where anything short of slam-dunk convictions will empower President Barack Obama's critics.

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.

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.

Coerced Confessions

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-Qaida 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."

Mixed Reaction

After the announcement, political criticism and praise for the decision divided mostly along party lines.

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.

Victims' Families React

Family members of Sept. 11 victims were also divided.

"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."

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.

The five suspects headed to New York are likely to face thousands of counts of murder and conspiracy. Mohammed and the four others — Waleed bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali — are all accused of orchestrating the 2001 attacks.

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.

Weeks Before Transfer

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.



View Larger Map


Sources: MSNBC, Google Maps

First Gitmo Detainee Ahmed Ghailani Arrives In NYC

Huffington Post----

WASHINGTON — U.S. authorities have brought the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to the United States, flying him into New York to face trial for bombing U.S. embassies, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The department said Ahmed Ghailani arrived in the early morning hours Tuesday. U.S. Marshals took custody of Ghailani from his military jailers and brought him to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Ghailani is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court later Tuesday.

"With his appearance in federal court today, Ahmed Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the murder of 224 people," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a press release. "The Justice Department has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system, and we will bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case."

Ghailani's trial will be an important test case for the Obama administration's plan to close the detention center at Guantanamo in seven months and bring some of the suspects to trial.

Ghailani was indicted in 1998 for the al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, attacks which killed more than 224 people, including 12 Americans.

U.S. officials charge Ghailani began his terrorist career on a bicycle delivering bomb parts and rose through the al-Qaida ranks to become a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden.

Ghailani, a Tanzanian, was in his twenties when prosecutors say he helped terrorists build one of the bombs that destroyed U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

He left Africa just before the bombings, according to investigators.

After the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings at U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Ghailani worked for al-Qaida as a document forger, trainer at a terror camp and bodyguard to bin Laden, according to military prosecutors.

He was categorized as a high-value detainee by U.S. authorities after he was captured in Pakistan in 2004 and was transferred to the detention center at the U.S. naval base in Cuba two years later.

Since his capture, Ghailani has denied knowing the TNT and oxygen tanks he delivered would be used to make a bomb. He also denied buying a vehicle used in one of the attacks, saying he could not drive.

Now, the Obama administration is trying to put him into the U.S. criminal justice system, despite claims by Republican critics that doing so would endanger American lives. Some lawmakers have opposed bringing any Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for trial, even in heavily guarded settings.

Last month, President Barack Obama said that preventing Ghailani from coming to U.S. soil "would prevent his trial and conviction. And after over a decade, it is time to finally see that justice is served, and that is what we intend to do."

Relatives of those killed in the embassy attacks have supported the decision to bring Ghailani to the U.S. for trial. Many of those relatives say that since the 2001 terror attacks, the earlier victims of al-Qaida have been forgotten.

Yet the president faces pressure from across the political spectrum on his plan to close the detention center. Democrats have said they want to see the president's plan for closing the base before approving money to finance it, and Republicans are fighting to keep Guantanamo open.

The decision to try Ghailani in New York also revives a long-dormant case charging bin Laden and top al-Qaida leadership with plotting the embassy attacks that killed more than 200 people and injured thousands, including many who were blinded by shards of flying glass. The attacks prompted then-President Bill Clinton to launch cruise missile attacks two weeks later on bin Laden's Afghan camps.

Four other men have been tried and convicted in the New York courthouse for their roles in the embassy attacks. All were sentenced to life in prison.


View Larger Map

Sources: Huffington Post, Google Maps