Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
A Poor Excuse for Justice
The Bush administration's decision to seek the death penalty against the accused masterminds of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks may give some Americans the satisfaction of thinking that justice is in the offing - that someone will finally pay for the murders of nearly 3,000 people. But they would be wrong, because the military tribunal system created by President Bush to try such defendants is fatally flawed.
For families of 9/11 victims, the charges announced yesterday against six Guantanamo detainees may be long overdue, but the likelihood that these prisoners - including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the al-Qaida operations chief who took credit for the 9/11 attacks - will be tried anytime soon is tiny because of the expected legal challenges.
In its eagerness to pursue terrorists, the Bush administration ignored the advice of military prosecutors and established a new system of military commissions. Congress later gave the commissions the power to suspend the right of habeas corpus for Guantanamo prisoners and to determine a detainee's status as an enemy combatant based on secret evidence unavailable to a prisoner.
From the start, the system was attacked for its lack of fairness. Through a series of legal challenges, the Supreme Court has forced the administration to provide more rights and a path of legal appeal to terrorist suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The high court is now considering new challenges to the system.
The planned trials of the six detainees will likely add to the legal tangle; the use of torture to obtain evidence surely will be contested. The head of the CIA recently acknowledged using waterboarding - a form of torture - to obtain evidence against three of the suspects, including Mr. Mohammed.
The Army's recently installed chief prosecutor, Col. Lawrence J. Morris, is promising a fair trial, with defendants gaining full access to evidence. Mr. Mohammed's notoriety will add to the challenge of delivering on that promise.
Mr. Bush is unlikely to have the satisfaction of seeing any of these defendants convicted before he leaves office. The next president should end this travesty of justice, shut down Guantanamo and bring the remaining prisoners back to the United States for trial or release to their home countries.
The architects of the military commission system failed to honor the basic principles of truth and justice that set the United States apart from other countries. America continues to pay a steep price for that failing.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
Comments
Due to trouble with browser compatibility, Common Dreams has reverted to the older version of Disqus for comments while they fix these problems.
8 Comments so far
Show All2008 List of Potential Guantanamo Detainees:
George W. Bush *
Richard Cheney *
Alberto Gonzalez *
Donald Rumsfeld **
Condoleeza Rice *
John Yoo **
Douglas Feith **
Stephen Cambone **
Paul Wolfowitz ***
Richard Perle ***
Michael Mukasey *
Antonin Scalia ***
*******************
* Waterboarding
** Waterboarding and prolonged stress positions
*** Waterboarding, stress positions, genital shocks, stuff under fingernails (the full treatment!)
Our principles of truth and justice? Is that what happened to Leonard Peltier? Our entire criminal justice system is racist and unjust. Prosecutors have fought tooth and nail to prevent reopening cases to allow DNA as evidence. Is it more important to cover up their errors than to release wrongly convicted innocents. or even prevent their wrongful executions?
What kind of fantasy land are these Baltimore editors living in?
kathyodat
The reason a regime holds show trials is to make an example of someone. That can't happen if the trial is held in secret. Can't the Busheviks do anything right?
Anyone else notice how BushCo & the Compliant Congress re-wrote the US Law Against War Crimes so that it would no longer address the Crimes of the Bush Administration but could instead be used to prosecute 9-11 suspects?
Definitely a two-fer ..
Once they're executed, the books will be closed on 9-11.
No need to worry our silly heads about investigations, who actually did it, real evidence.
Just go shopping & enjoy your Faux News.
I saw the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side yesterday. Horrible and hard evidence of what we have done, and are doing. Almost harder to sit through the close ups of replays of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Bush. Many articles re torture on common dreams today make me think how out of control it all is. Bush signed the law specifying that none in his admin can be prosecuted for this?
Years ago we read in the newspapers about the Russian 'show trials'. As a young kid I asked my dad what that meant. He told me how justice wasn't respected in some countries. As a six year old I couldn't understand how any country couldn't respect justice. I thought it was really strange, but I was glad I lived here.
Now I see America doing exactly the same thing with no pretense that it is engaging real justice. Now I know that totalitaianism needs to show disrespect for justice to earn the fear of its citizens. This is what young kids are learning today, talking to their dads about.
These are certainly good points, but there is a fundamental one that was omitted. That is, the "trials" are being held in Guantanamo, an illegal colony of U.S. imperialism. Another point that needs to be added also is a few hundred miles away, Posado Carriles, ono of the most notroious terriorist the world has known, walks around Miami a free terrorist. Just as Siberia was a Soviet Gulog, Guantanamo is an American gulog. The real "values" of the U.S. are imperialism, deciet, terrorism against much of the world, war crimes and torture; all of these values are evident and on display. The world is watching, and they condemn the U.S. for the barbarity that is the real history of this god forsaken nation.
"In its eagerness to pursue terrorists, the Bush administration ignored the advice of military prosecutors and established a new system of military commissions. Congress later gave the commissions the power to suspend the right of habeas corpus for Guantanamo prisoners and to determine a detainee's status as an enemy combatant based on secret evidence unavailable to a prisoner."
Brought to you with the support of Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, of the Democratic party.