Obama, Holder predict conviction in civilian trial of Sept. 11 suspect

WASHINGTON (AP) — From opposite ends of the globe, President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder firmly rejected criticism Wednesday of the planned New York trial of the professed Sept. 11 mastermind and predicted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be exposed as a murderous coward, convicted and executed.

“Failure is not an option,” Holder declared.

The president, in a series of TV interviews during his trip to Asia, said those offended by the legal rights accorded Mohammed by virtue of his facing a civilian trial rather than a military tribunal won’t find it “offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.”

Obama, who is a lawyer, quickly added that he did not mean to suggest he was prejudging the outcome of Mohammed’s trial. “I’m not going to be in that courtroom,” he said. “That’s the job of the prosecutors, the judge and the jury.”

The president said in interviews broadcast on NBC and CNN that prosecutors in the case who specialize in terrorism have offered assurances that “we’ll convict this person with the evidence they’ve got, going through our system.”

In Washington, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Holder for hours about his decision to send Mohammed and four others from the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to New York for trial in a federal courthouse blocks from the site of the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

The attorney general said he is certain the men will be convicted, but even if a suspect were acquitted, “that doesn’t mean that person would be released into our country.”

Tempers flared when Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., challenged Holder to say how a civilian trial could be the best idea, since Mohammed had previously sought to plead guilty before a military commission.

The attorney general said his decision was not based “on the whims or the desires of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ... He will not select the prosecution venue. I will. And I have.”