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| Experts don't expect more Moussaoui trials |
| 2006-05-07 |
| Even with Zacarias Moussaoui's trial in federal court complete, legal experts don't expect to see top captured al-Qaida operatives brought into civilian courts soon, or perhaps ever. Moussaoui, the inept al-Qaida conspirator who was in jail on Sept. 11, 2001, was sentenced this week to consecutive life sentences after a 4 1/2-year legal battle that cleared hurdles many thought were insurmountable. Defense lawyers questioned how fair it was for Moussaoui to face a potential death penalty while a handful of so-called "high value" al-Qaida captives, like Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and coordinator Ramzi Binalshibh, are held at secret locations with no charges. Prosecutor David Raskin told jurors: "True, they don't face the death penalty now, but they are giving information. What do think is going to happen to them when the information runs dry?" Raskin's colleague David Novak went further: "They're going to face justice, just like this defendant does, when their interrogation time is over." But neither Raskin nor Novak said specifically where these enemy combatants would face justice U.S. civilian courts or military tribunals or elsewhere. "The successful conclusion of the Moussaoui trial reaffirms that even those in military detention may at some point by tried in a civilian court," Georgetown University law professor Viet Dinh said in an interview. That option was bolstered by "the way they found to protect the rights of the defendant and the government's interest in keeping some secrets," added the former top Justice Department official. But speaking Friday to European counterparts in Austria, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wasn't just keeping the civilian court option open. "There are cases in which our criminal justice system is the appropriate way to deliver justice," Gonzales said. "But there also are instances in which the national security of the United States requires a military response Â… such as detaining enemy combatants and making use of military commissions." Some doubt the Moussaoui experience will open the courtroom door for other terrorists. Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has arranged lawyers for enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, dismissed the promises of Raskin and Novak as mere "lawyer talk." "They have no idea what's going to happen to those people," Goodman said. Goodman believes Moussaoui's trial "shows civilian courts are absolutely equipped" to handle terrorist cases. The Bush administration's military commissions, just beginning trial work at Guantanamo, fail to protect defendants' rights, he said. The legitimacy of those commissions is before the Supreme Court, expected to rule before July. But Goodman doubts the government wants to use civilian courts for terrorists because U.S. judges wouldn't stand for the abuse allegedly used to extract confessions from al-Qaida operatives. Confessions obtained under torture or many forms of duress are inadmissible in U.S. courts. For instance, Mohamed al-Qahtani, the "20th hijacker" who missed participating in the Sept. 11 attacks, confessed to his role only after he was threatened with dogs, forced to wear a bra and a thong, and interrogated 18 to 20 hours a day for over a month, according to a military investigation. More extreme techniques have allegedly been used against Shaikh Mohammed. "The conditions and circumstances of their secret detention and the question of whether they have been tortured would make a trial in civilian court very difficult," said Lawrence Barcella, a longtime federal prosecutor now in private practice. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over Moussaoui's trial, said the experience proved civilian courts can solve problems posed by unruly defendants, records that number over a million documents, and the government's need to keep some evidence secret. Many had questioned "whether this case should have been tried (at all), whether it should have been tried in this courthouse Â… or Â… in a military tribunal," Brinkema noted. Trial lawyers "had to work around classification issues that were at one point, we all thought, insurmountable," she said. Yet "this evidence was able to be brought together in a format and presented openly in a public court of law." One issue that threatened to derail the trial was how to accommodate Moussaoui's right to call captured enemy combatants to testify in his defense. An appeals court agreed with the government that bringing them to court or even allowing Moussaoui's lawyers to question them would endanger national security. Defense lawyers were forced to rely on summaries distilled from their interrogations. Prosecutors and defense lawyers also crafted declassified substitutes for some documents and even showed the jury two secret documents that weren't read aloud or put in the public record. Dinh said the case of Jose Padilla shows that military detainees can still end up in civilian courtrooms. Once accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city after the Sept. 11 attacks, Padilla a U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago was held in a military prison without charges for 3 1/2 years. Last year, he was transferred to civilian court to face less sensational charges of helping provide recruits, money and supplies to Islamic extremists worldwide. Whether other detainees follow Padilla into court will depend on what procedures were used in their detention and how much evidence prosecutors were able to obtain independently of the interrogations, Dinh said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 Anonymous grave, hell. Sharks gotta eat, too. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-05-07 12:01 |
| #1 When we are done pumping these terrorists for all the info we can get out get out of them put as bullet in their brain. No military trials. No Civilian trials. No lawyers, No Judges(who are lawyers too), no grandstanding Senators or Congressmen pontificating(who are often lawyers) to foul it up as only lawyers can do. A bullet in the back of teh skull and an anonymous grave. |
| Posted by: SPoD 2006-05-07 07:12 |