Overdue reversal on terrorist trials

Many Americans were aghast when the Obama administration announced that it would have the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington tried in a U.S. civilian court - lavishing on him full U.S. constitutional rights to which he is not entitled as a foreign terrorist.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has proudly acknowledged that he planned the 9/11 attacks, which killed almost 3,000 Americans. He and four alleged accomplices were captured overseas as non-uniformed enemy combatants. Therefore, they have no right to trials on U.S. soil in civilian courts and should be tried in military tribunals.

Yet by pushing for a civilian trial for Mohammed, the Obama administration created the horrible possibility that key evidence against him - evidence that would be permitted at a military tribunal - would be thrown out in a U.S. trial.

That isn't just a vague "possibility." In a separate case tried in New York in 2010, al-Qaida terrorist Ahmed Ghailani was acquitted of literally hundreds of counts of murder and scores of other charges involving the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Like Mohammed, Ghailani was captured overseas as an enemy combatant. But key evidence against him had to be thrown out of his trial in a U.S. civilian court. He was convicted on only one charge, and could be out of prison in less than 20 years!

Reluctantly - and belatedly - the Obama administration has now reversed course and said it will not seek to try Mohammed and his alleged accomplices in a civilian court, but in a military tribunal. Congress had appropriately voted to forbid terrorism detainees held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from being brought to the U.S. mainland. So, with no real alternative, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Mohammed and the others will be tried by military tribunal after all.

That is the right decision - though it is regrettable that it took the administration so long to make it.

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