Working people should reject Washington’s claim that it has the "right" to intervene in other nations to arrest, kidnap, and try anyone it wants. The four convicted men are from Tanzania, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, as well as a Lebanese-born U.S. citizen.

And the U.S. rulers, who after the embassy blasts carried out brazen bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, have no moral authority to talk about peace and justice--they are the number one terrorists in the world.

Washington will use the banner of "fighting terrorism" for its future military aggressions around the globe. U.S. officials are already floating other potential targets of attack. For example, FBI officials claim Iranian government personnel were involved in a 1996 attack at a U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia, but have not yet been able to put together what the Washington Post calls a "U.S.-style criminal case"--that is, a legal facade for kidnapping and trying citizens from other countries in U.S. courts.

The New York Times editors piously professed concern over the fact that the FBI interrogated and extracted confessions from three of the men without any lawyer present, but then concurred with U.S. judge Leonard Sand’s ruling that the arrested men had been read their rights. In fact, U.S. cops interrogating one of the men, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, told him that if he demanded a lawyer he would be left in the hands of Kenyan authorities where, they said, "You will be hanged from your neck like a dog."

The U.S. government is using "antiterrorism" trials to justify the introduction of measures that erode democratic rights, including the use of secret evidence, deportation of immigrants without due process, and stepped up use of the death penalty. The "antiterror" trial and planned execution of ultrarightist Timothy McVeigh--an unpopular target--is being used as a precedent to pave the way to go after others. Who will be next? The employers will seek to use the death penalty as a weapon of intimidation and terror against working-class fighters here and abroad.

Class-conscious workers must explain why our class has a stake in opposing this latest violation of democratic rights and national sovereignty by the U.S. government.  
 
 
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