The N&R’s Doug Clark ponders which course justice should take for 9/11 mastermind and A&T grad Khalid Sheik Mohammed:
Now that Khalid Sheik Mohammed reportedly has confessed during a Combatant Status Review Hearing to a leading role in the 9/11 attacks, he should be put on trial in the federal court system….
In Mohammed’s case, there must be a considerable file of evidence. Enough to convict him in a court of law of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism and mass murder? Let’s find out.
I suppose there could be certain problems regarding his arrest and long detention. He has been denied the rights that would have been afforded to an American criminal suspect, like access to an attorney. Maybe he’s been tortured. Could a judge dismiss charges against him on technical grounds? For that reason, is it better to try him in a military court? I don’t know.
For some insight, I turn to Cal Thomas, who offered offered his opinion on the Zacharias Moussaoui trial:
This trial should have been held in a military court, not a civilian one. Civilians are more likely to be stricken with a malady I call Oprah disease, which is all about feelings and little about objective truth. This malady affects every layer of public and private life. That a majority of jurors concluded that Moussaoui should not be executed because he had a difficult childhood was famously mocked by Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics in the musical “West Side Story.” One of the gang members says, “Hey, I’m depraved on account I’m deprived.”
So, Moussaoui may have been right. He did win, in a sense, by again exposing America’s soft moral underpinnings. Moussaoui deserved death. That he won’t get it deprives him of justice. He will never have liberty again, but those whose deaths he plotted and rejoiced over will never have life again either. That isn’t justice. It isn’t even fair.
