Thomas Wilner: Obama Made the Right Call on KSM
[—Mr. Wilner was counsel of record to Guantanamo detainees in the Supreme Court's June 2004 and June 2008 rulings in their favor on habeas corpus rights.]
The Obama administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 conspirators in federal court marks a fundamental shift in the way we fight terrorism. For eight years we have allowed the terrorists to intimidate us into abandoning our laws and institutions. This decision shows that we're strong enough to face the threat of terrorism without compromising the rule of law.
The premeditated murder of innocent civilians far from any battlefield is not the act of a warrior, but of a criminal. The prior administration detained these men indefinitely as "enemy combatants." But the laws of war allow only temporary detention of combatants until the end of the armed conflict in which they were captured. They were never intended to authorize the detention of people for terrorist activities far from the battlefield.
Moreover, calling these people combatants elevates them to a status they do not deserve. Judge William Young got it right in rejecting the claims of Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber: "You are not an enemy combatant. . . . You are not a soldier in any war. To call you a soldier gives you far too much stature . . . . You're no warrior. You are a terrorist, a species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders. . . . You're no big deal."
Anyone who suggests that our criminal justice system will coddle these terrorists is simply not familiar with the record. In a detailed study prepared in 2006 under the Bush administration, the Justice Department reported "impressive success" in convicting terrorists. Between September 2001 and June 2006, it obtained convictions against more than 250 people for terrorism-related offenses, covering a range of activities, from completed acts of terrorism to the "early stages of terrorist planning."
A white paper published in May 2008 by Richard Zabel and James Benjamin, former federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, where KSM and his cohorts will be tried, examined nearly 125 federal terrorism prosecutions involving Islamic extremist groups. They concluded that the existing "criminal justice system serves as an effective means of convicting and incapacitating terrorists." Significantly, the conviction rate has been more than 90% for terrorist defendants generally and 100% in cases with domestic targets. No coddling evident there...
Read entire article at WSJ
The Obama administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 conspirators in federal court marks a fundamental shift in the way we fight terrorism. For eight years we have allowed the terrorists to intimidate us into abandoning our laws and institutions. This decision shows that we're strong enough to face the threat of terrorism without compromising the rule of law.
The premeditated murder of innocent civilians far from any battlefield is not the act of a warrior, but of a criminal. The prior administration detained these men indefinitely as "enemy combatants." But the laws of war allow only temporary detention of combatants until the end of the armed conflict in which they were captured. They were never intended to authorize the detention of people for terrorist activities far from the battlefield.
Moreover, calling these people combatants elevates them to a status they do not deserve. Judge William Young got it right in rejecting the claims of Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber: "You are not an enemy combatant. . . . You are not a soldier in any war. To call you a soldier gives you far too much stature . . . . You're no warrior. You are a terrorist, a species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders. . . . You're no big deal."
Anyone who suggests that our criminal justice system will coddle these terrorists is simply not familiar with the record. In a detailed study prepared in 2006 under the Bush administration, the Justice Department reported "impressive success" in convicting terrorists. Between September 2001 and June 2006, it obtained convictions against more than 250 people for terrorism-related offenses, covering a range of activities, from completed acts of terrorism to the "early stages of terrorist planning."
A white paper published in May 2008 by Richard Zabel and James Benjamin, former federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, where KSM and his cohorts will be tried, examined nearly 125 federal terrorism prosecutions involving Islamic extremist groups. They concluded that the existing "criminal justice system serves as an effective means of convicting and incapacitating terrorists." Significantly, the conviction rate has been more than 90% for terrorist defendants generally and 100% in cases with domestic targets. No coddling evident there...