Trial of 9/11 Six

Scripps Howard: Finally, six and a half years after 9/11 some of the planners of that horrific assault on average people, office workers mostly going about their business, will stand trial.

The government has filed 169 charges of murder and assorted war crimes against six Guantanamo Bay detainees for planning and helping execute the attack and it is planning to seek the death penalty.

There was a long detour reaching this point because of President Bush’s insistence on using military tribunals the White House had devised that seemed intended to minimize the chances that anybody ever would be found innocent.

The defendant had no right to attend his own trial or see the evidence against him or call witnesses or appeal to an independent court. Hearsay evidence and evidence obtained by torture was admissible. And the president could determine the final verdict.

These kangaroo courts were another self-inflicted blow on the United States; the champion of human rights and the rule of law had seemingly turned its back on both. If these tribunals had prevailed, few would have seen their verdicts as credible.

Modified version

In the event, the Supreme Court struck down the whole system in 2006, and Congress came back with a modified version that gave the defendants most of the rights of a U.S. soldier facing a court martial.

The public perception of these trials faces another problem in that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, was water boarded and two defendants were also subjected to harsh interrogation techniques. Mohammed seems to have confessed to most of the terrorism of the last 15 years — 9/11, the beheading of Daniel Pearl, the shoe bomber, the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

The goal of the prosecution should be to establish for all the world to see that 9/11 was not a random act of terrorism but a meticulously, long-planned and cold-blooded operation supported by a infrastructure that though damaged survives to this day.