Vol. 73/No. 46      November 30, 2009

Holder said the Justice Department intends to try five men accused of “conspiring to commit the 9/11 attacks” in a federal court “just blocks from where the twin towers stood.” They are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Bin Attash, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Ali Abdul-Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi.

During interrogations while in detention, Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding 183 times. Waterboarding involves pouring water over the prisoner’s face, which is covered with some sort of cloth or cellophane, while the prisoner is bound to an inclined board. The practice is meant to simulate drowning. That method of torture and other examples of abuse of prisoners at Guantánamo discredited the U.S. government around the world, leading the majority of U.S. rulers to conclude the camp was a political liability. President Barack Obama pledged he would close the prison within a year of taking office.

Democrats have argued that in order to more effectively fight terrorism, measures carried out under President George W. Bush—many considered to be torture—should be scaled back. Obama suspended the military tribunals set up under Bush that allow hearsay and evidence obtained from torture, as well as the withholding of evidence from the defendant. Five others in Guantánamo, however, will be tried in military tribunals, Holder said.

Republican Rudolph Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City at the time of the attack on the World Trade Center, sharply disagreed with holding the trial in a New York federal court. “This was an act of war,” he said on Fox News November 13. The defendants should be “treated as war criminals,” and prosecuted by a military tribunal.

Giuliani said he also disagreed with the Obama administration’s refusal to describe the shooting of 13 soldiers at Ft. Hood November 5 as an “Islamic terrorist attack.” “Why this administration has trouble figuring that out when the man yelled out, ‘Allahu akbar’ when he was murdering people, as a former prosecutor I find frighteningly incompetent,” he said.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, on the other hand, said, “It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site where so many New Yorkers were murdered.”

Former attorney general Michael Mukasey said Holder’s plan “seems to abandon the view that we are involved in a war.” He said trying the men in a civilian court risks disclosure of intelligence secrets and would give al-Qaeda a platform to expound its views.

While most of those speaking out against the trial in New York are Republicans, New York governor David Paterson, a Democrat, said, “We’re still having trouble getting over” the World Trade Center attack. “We have still been unable to rebuild that site, and having the terrorists tried so close to the attack is going to be an encumbrance on all New Yorkers.” Paterson was flatly told by Obama some months ago he is not welcome on the Democratic ticket in 2010.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported the civilian trial, but without enthusiasm. “I’m not going to second guess the attorney general,” she told ABC News November 15.

Obama told NBC and CNN November 18 that those offended by a civilian trial for Mohammed won’t think it’s offensive “when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.”
 
 
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