Via the LAT: Chaos at Guantanamo tribunal
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators renewed their vows to die as martyrs at the hands of the U.S. military, offering to plead guilty and dispense with pretrial matters to hasten their execution.Mohammed mocked the tribunal for its bureaucracy and dismissed his Navy lawyer for having served in Iraq, where U.S. troops have been “killing our brothers and sisters.”
But given the chance to enter pleas later in the day, Mohammed and two others declined because they were concerned that pleading guilty without a military jury present might make them ineligible for a sentence of death.
The judge newly assigned to the Sept. 11 defendants’ case, Army Col. Stephen R. Henley, asked government lawyers whether rules for the military commissions, as the trials are known, allowed him to find the men guilty.
The law enacted by Congress two years ago calls for a military jury of at least 12 members to sentence a defendant to death. No jury has been assembled because the court had expected to address only pretrial issues this week. The proceedings are the last scheduled before the Bush administration leaves office.
Of the many things that come to mind in regards to the this situation, the one that is foremost is the fact that after all this time the Bush administration and the Congress (although the blame for the foundational policies belongs with the administration) have been unable to put together a set of policies to deal with these prisoners. Despite over half a decade to sort it out, it remains an incoherent mess.
The whole thing has an unfortunate keystone kop quality to it:
After being allowed to meet together for a defense strategy session on Nov. 4, Mohammed and the others wrote a letter to Henley asking that all motions filed by their lawyers be dismissed so they could immediately enter guilty pleas.[...]
Henley didn’t review the letter until Sunday because rules require that communications from “high-value detainees” be read only in secure facilities. Henley said he didn’t have access to the top-security venue until Sunday.
For those keeping score at home, that is a span of over a month from the writing to the reading.
Of the many things of relevance here, one is that the US government has insisted to the world that it knows what it is doing in regards to Guantanamo and the detainees it holds there. However, there has been little that has come out of this process over time to suggest competence, and this is just the latest example.
It is not, by the way, that I think that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is innocent. Quite the contrary, he clearly rates as the type of person who needs to be custody. However, the fact that the system is so ill-equipped to deal with the obvious cases makes one wonder how well it is suited to deal with the cases that are not so clear cut.
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December 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
If we’re going to be honest here - you know what I’d do if I was the officer charged with reading that letter?
I’d sit on it for TWO months. Then I’d read it. Then I’d wait another two months to provide them feedback.
These guys are terrorists. They are trying to get attention. That’s what terrorists do.
I wouldn’t give it to them. They deserve absolutely zero media attention, and the messages that they are trying to deliver through their guilty pleas and their “I dare you to execute us” antics should be ignored.
They should languish for a few more years, until people really forget about them - then they should be tried quickly and quietly by a tribunal, and locked away in a little hole in the basement of Ft. Leavenworth to live out the rest of their days.
The worst punishment you can give a terrorist is to make them live a long, boring, confined life, knowing that the world has forgotten about them, their message is reaching exactly zero people, and their wait for Paradise will take a long time and that in the interim they get to make little rocks out of big rocks and eat prison food.
Personally, if it had been me, I’d have shot them on sight and saved the government a lot of hassle.
December 10th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
“Personally, if it had been me, I’d have shot them on sight and saved the government a lot of hassle. ”
Reply to Captain D
Still a sh*t, eh?