The administration of President Barack Obama has abandoned plans to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and four co−conspirators in a civilian court. Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that Mohammad will be tried for war crimes by a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.
The Daily reluctantly supports the administration’s decision to allow a military trial. Criminal proceedings for alleged terrorist suspects have historically occurred in civilian courts, and we believe that is where they belong. But we recognize that the alternative to a military trial would be to leave the case tied up in political gridlock for years to come. Since Obama declared his intent to close the facility at Guantanamo Bay when he assumed office, a number of security and political issues have made it nearly impossible to empty out the facility, particularly congressional roadblocks that have effectively prevented the military from moving prisoners into prisons within the United States.
These roadblocks were in place even when Obama enjoyed large Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Now that the balance of power in Congress has shifted to favor Republicans −− and with no signs that this trend is going to reverse itself in the near future −− it will undoubtedly be many years before the process of bringing Guantanamo detainees into the United States can proceed more smoothly.
Obama may have erred politically when he announced in November 2009 that he planned to hold the civilian trial in a court in Manhattan. Many Americans objected to seeing the terrorists behind the attacks return to New York. And though many New York politicians including Mayor Michael Bloomberg initially supported the idea, they turned on it −− the straw that broke the camel’s back −− when the economic costs of securing downtown Manhattan became clear. This put too much political capital in the hands of his opponents and fueled their push for a military trial.
Clearing the way for a civilian trial would take years, and it benefits no one except the defendants to pin the future of the 9/11 trials on the outcome of a contentious partisan issue, for which no end appears to be in sight. Given this choice between holding off the trial indefinitely and holding it in a military court, the Obama administration must opt to hold military proceedings.
That said, this decision comes with considerable drawbacks. Trying 9/11 suspects in a military court casts the attacks strictly as a war crime. The attacks didn’t occur within the context of a war. It wasn’t an act against the American military; it was an unprovoked attack on the American people, on our civilians. A trial by jury would have held the terrorists directly accountable to the victims of their crime. A guilty verdict handed down by a jury of American citizens, rather than by a tribunal of military officers, would have been a much more meaningful and satisfying result.
Still, it is better that a guilty verdict come from our military in the near future than to wait 20 years for a verdict to occur at all.