Attorney General Eric Holder (Larry Downing/REUTERS)
Attorney General Eric Holder announced today a reversal of Obama administration's position that alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed would be better tried in a civilian courtroom and will now face charges in a military commission. Despite the fact that the administration is committed to the rule of law and that the original policy of prosecuting KSM in a civilian trial was the correct course, politics—once again—trumps all. Marcy Wheeler has a
quick liveblog of his statement, and the NYT had this
background piece.
Mr. Holder, who had wanted to prosecute Mr. Mohammed before a regular civilian court in New York City, changed his mind after Congress imposed a series of restrictions barring the transfer of Guantánamo detainees into the United States, making such a trial impossible for now, the official said.
Mr. Mohammed and the accused conspirators were charged before a military commission at Guantánamo Bay late in the Bush administration, and had given signs that they were preparing to plead guilty. But their trial was cut short in January 2009 when President Obama, as one of his first moves after his inauguration, froze all tribunal proceedings at Guantánamo to start a review of the counterterrorism policies he inherited from former President George W. Bush.
The administration eventually decided to prosecute some terrorism suspects in civilian courts, but to keep using a revised form of tribunals for others. Mr. Obama placed Mr. Holder in charge of deciding where each detainee should be tried.
As Marcy says in a follow-up post, at least Holder didn't try to spin this as a smart or principled reversal, and he maintains that trying KSM in a civilian court, with the long record of successful prosecutions of terrorists in those courts, was the right decision. She links to this, from Jane Mayer.
By using the civilian justice system, Holder had wanted to send several important messages, among them that terrorists are criminals, not some new breed of super warrior; and that the U.S. legal system is the strongest, fairest, and most credible system in the world. A guilty verdict arrived at in front of the world, in a public trial, with ordinary citizens sitting in judgment of K.S.M., would be internationally accepted as legitimate, in a way that no military tribunal ever will be. Or so the thinking went.
That's as true today as when Holder originally made the decision. This was a fight for the rule of law, and one that should have been continued.