The recent virtual acquittal of an enemy combatant who helped carry out deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa highlights the wrongness of the Obama administration’s decision to try such cases in civilian courts.
Ahmed Ghailani was captured overseas after the terrorist attacks, which killed a dozen Americans and 212 others. As a non-uniformed enemy combatant captured off U.S. soil, he had no right to a trial in our civilian courts, complete with full U.S. constitutional protections. Instead, he should have been tried in a military tribunal at U.S. facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But President Barack Obama campaigned before his 2008 election in favor of closing the “Gitmo” detention facility for enemy combatants and trying terrorists in civilian courts.
That decision is why Ghailani was convicted of only one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings – and not of the 284 other charges he faced, including 224 counts of murder.
Because some of the evidence against Ghailani was obtained under CIA interrogation that his attorneys claim amounted to torture, evidence that he bought TNT for the attacks was not admitted at the civilian trial. It could have been used in a military tribunal. Without the key evidence, jurors acquitted Ghailani of all but the one charge of conspiring to destroy government buildings.
The absurdity of that verdict was described by National Review magazine’s Rich Lowry.
“Does anyone believe that a truck bomb meant to destroy a U.S. embassy wasn’t also intended to kill and maim everyone in the vicinity?” Lowry asked.
Instead of execution, Ghailani could now be set free in just 20 years.
Worse still, the administration may yet try the admitted mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – in a civilian court, where key evidence could also be excluded.
Ghailani’s escape from real justice and the possible trial of Mohammed in a civilian trial to which he is not entitled are serious defeats both for justice and for common sense. The path the Obama administration is following creates the serious prospect that mass murderers dedicated to the destruction of the United States could one day be turned loose to harm our nation again.