An exclusive performance of Gitmo Jihad Theater opened over the weekend. What happened underscores why these military tribunals never, ever belonged in the civilian court system that Obama/Holder had pushed for (until running into the common-sense public opposition buzzsaw).
The jihadists’ mockery of America — and more notably, the jihadists’ lawyers’ mockery — outraged 9/11 families:
Lee Hanson became deeply angry as the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and co-defendants tried to undermine their arraignment on 3,000 counts of murder at a military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Hanson’s son, daughter-in-law and 2-year-old granddaughter, the youngest 9/11 victim, were killed in the terror attacks over a decade ago. All were aboard United Flight 175, the second plane to crash into the twin towers.
“They praise Allah. I say, `Damn you!”‘ said the silver-haired retiree from Eaton, Conn.
When it comes to justice, “it seems like it’s an afterthought,” said his wife, Eunice Hanson.
Moans, sighs and exclamations erupted Saturday as Hanson and other relatives of Sept. 11 victims watched the closed-circuit TV feed of the court hearing from a movie theater at Fort Hamilton in New York City. It was one of four U.S. military bases where the arraignment was broadcast live for victims’ family members, survivors and emergency personnel who responded to the attacks.
“It’s actually a joke, it feels ridiculous,” said Jim Riches, whose firefighter son, Jimmy, died at the World Trade Center. “It looks like it’s going to be a very long trial.”
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other defendants were arraigned on charges that include terrorism and murder, the first time in more than three years that they appeared in public. During the hearing, they generally refused to cooperate. At one point, one detainee leafed through a copy of The Economist magazine, then passed it to another. At other times, the defendants knelt in prayer.
One of the defense attorneys insisted on sharia law for all women in the courtroom:
The defense attorney who wore a traditional Islamic outfit during the rowdy arraignment of the accused Sept. 11 terrorists is defending her courtroom appeal that other women in the room wear more “appropriate” clothing to the proceedings — out of respect for her client’s Muslim beliefs.
Cheryl Bormann, counsel for defendant Walid bin Attash, attended the arraignment Saturday dressed in a hijab, apparently because her client insisted on it. She further requested that the court order other women to follow that example so that the defendants do not have to avert their eyes “for fear of committing a sin under their faith.”
At a press conference Sunday at Guantanamo Bay, Bormann said she dresses in a hijab at “all times” when she meets with her client “out of respect” for his beliefs. Asked why she requested other women do the same, Bormann said, “When you’re on trial for your life, you need to be focused.”
Bormann, who is not Muslim, claimed the issue came up several years ago, when a paralegal wore “very short skirts” and it became a distraction for the defendants.
The five Guantanamo Bay detainees — including the notorious Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – accused of plotting the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, wreaked havoc on Saturday when the suspects stubbornly refused to respond to the U.S. military judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, when he questioned the defendants, who then disrupted the proceedings, according to a federal law enforcement source.
Artist's sketch of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in military court on Saturday. Photo credit: DOD Military Commissions
At the same time, their defense attorneys attempted to put the court, the CIA and the United States on trial instead of the self-proclaimed jihadists.
During the chaotic hearing, the suspected al-Qaeda members’ defense attorneys began their strategy of questioning the legitimacy of the war crimes tribunal, telling Col. Pohl that the proceedings were not fair to their clients.
The attorneys were intent on discussing how the defendants were all held for more than three years in secret CIA prisons before being sent to Guantanamoin 2006, and all of them claimed they were tortured by interrogators.
The CIA had conceded that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the only prisoner of the five on trial to be subjected to harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.
However, according to Fox News Channel’s National Security Correspondent Catherine Herridge, when the defense attorneys tried to discuss the way the defendants had been treated and used the word “torture” the CCTV (closed-circuit television) feed of the hearings for journalists and family members of victims was interrupted.
The judge reportedly became visibly upset with the defense lawyers when they repeatedly attempted to raise the torture issue.
“The brazen defense lawyers actually interrogated Judge Pohl about what he has read in the past. They also questioned his judicial experience and whether he, as a soldier, considered himself to be a victim of 9-11,” the federal law enforcement source said to the Law Enforcement Examiner.
According to the Office of Military Commissions, a small group of Americans whose relatives died in the 9-11 attacks were selected using a lottery and were flown to the Guantanamo Bay military installation to observe and listen to the legal proceedings from behind a glass wall.
Saturday’s military commission hearing held in a specially designed, top-security courtroom at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was the first public display of the alleged terrorists since 2009.
The five radical Muslims are charged with conspiring with the late Osama bin Laden, murder in violation of the laws of war, hijacking, terrorism and other charges stemming from the 2001 attacks that ultimately led to the United States invasion of Afghanistan and the global war against al-Qaeda, its allies, and its supporters.
“The decision to hold the trial of these five mass murderers in a military court was the best decision ever made by the Obama administration — at least once they stopped listening to Attorney General Eric Holder,” said former U.S. Marine and NYPD official Mike Snopes. ”The military should be able to control the suspects and their attorneys and give them all a fair trial,” he said.
Panetta's underlings continue to stonewall the House probe of classified information leaks at the Gitmo detention facility. Credit: Defenselink
This week the head of the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security blasted the Pentagon’s failure to comply with a request regarding documents related to the discovery of classified information in the prison cells of Guantanamo Bay military detention center inmates.
U.S. Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, blasted Department of Defense (DoD) officials for their refusal to provide the identities of attorneys representing terrorist suspects in Gitmo who were involved with the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
In January 2012, former CIA officer John Kiriakouwas charged with leaking classified information that, by way of detainees’ defense counsel, ended up in the cells of al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo, according to Rep. King.
The alarming revelation came just days after lawyers for an al-Qaeda operative — USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri– jailed at the facility, attempted to convince a military judge that monitoring detainees’ mail violates attorney-client privilege. The admiral (David Woods) who runs the prison explained that detainees’ legal mail is promptly marked after being identified and not read to preserve attorney-client privilege, according to the Law Enforcement Examiner’s sources.
“Apparently Gitmo detainees — who are terrorists and enemy combatants — have more rights than Americans in U.S. prisons. Prisoner mail in the U.S. is routinely screened. But terrorists and people caught on the battlefield receive minimal scrutiny?” notes former police commander and military intelligence officer Sid Franes.
Admiral Woods’ explanation was not satisfactory to al-Nashiri’s extensive legal team or the left-wing civil rights groups that attended the hearing in a top security courtroom built to try terrorists. Most mainstream media outletswere also critical of the screening process, which military officials say is necessary to intercept contraband before it gets in the hands of the prisoners.
Meanwhile, King also called for the Department of Justice to disclose the names of lawyers involved in showing photos of covert CIA officers to terrorists at Guantanamo.
King, citing a Committee investigation into “the U.S. government’s response and handling of threats potentially emanating from detainees,” requested that DoD General Counsel Jeh Johnson, share the names of all defense counsel who have represented certain detainees implicated in the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Last week, Johnson flatly refused to identify the attorneys, going so far as to state that the Pentagon “reserves the right to object to further inquiry on the overall subject of defense counsel’s conduct in their efforts to represent the 9/11 defendants.”
Chairman King said:“Jeh Johnson’s refusal is unacceptable, and I completely disagree with his reasoning.
“Congress designed military commissions to be open and transparent. Unlike the CIA officers whose identities were passed to al-Qaeda, these attorneys ‘representing’ Guantanamo detainees have no reasonable expectation that their identities be kept secret.
“As an attorney myself, I fully respect the adversarial system and the important, and public, role of defense attorneys. If these detainees’ lawyers have only engaged in zealous representation of their clients, they should have nothing to hide.
“Legitimate advocacy does not include abusing a position of trust by sharing classified information with members of al-Qaeda. A license to practice law is not a license to aid the enemies of the United States.
“The disgraced CIA officer (John Kiriakou) divulged the classified information to journalists who, in turn, disclosed it to an investigator working for the taxpayer-funded defense team of an incarcerated terrorist [at Gitmo]. Authorities subsequently found some of the files, including photographs of certain government employees and contractors, in the cells of high-value detainees at the military prison.”
A captured terrorist watching TV in Guantanamo Bay military prison. Credit: Defenselink/ISAF
Classified U.S. government information was found in the cells of high-value detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison that houses the world’s most dangerous terrorists, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The alarming revelation comes just days after lawyers for an al-Qaeda operative—USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri—jailed at the facility tried convincing a military judge that monitoring detainees’ mail violates attorney-client privilege.
Representatives from the non-profit, public-interest group Judicial Watch covered the pretrial hearing at the U.S. Naval station in Cuba last week.
Ironically, a large portion of the two-day proceeding involved security measures put in place to ensure that contraband does not make it into the facility that houses 171 prisoners. Attorneys for al-Nashiri argued at length to convince the military tribunal judge hearing the case, Army Colonel James Pohl, that al-Nashiri’s mail not be monitored.
The admiral (David Woods) who runs the prison took the stand to explain that detainees’ legal mail is promptly marked after being identified and not read to preserve attorney-client privilege.
This was not satisfactory to al-Nashiri’s extensive legal team or the left-wing civil rights groups that attended the hearing in a top security courtroom built to try terrorists. Most mainstream media outlets were also critical of the screening process, which military officials say is necessary to intercept contraband before it gets in the hands of the prisoners.
Supporting the argument is this week’s announcement that an agent with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been criminally charged for repeatedly leaking classified information, including the identities of covert agency operatives involved in the capture and interrogation of terrorists, a story covered by the Law Enforcement Examiner.
Some of the materials were actually seized from the cells of Guantanamo detainees, according to the DOJ.
The disgraced CIA officer (John Kiriakou) divulged the classified information to journalists who, in turn, disclosed it to an investigator working for the taxpayer-funded defense team of an incarcerated terrorist. Authorities subsequently found some of the files, including photographs of certain government employees and contractors, in the cells of high-value detainees at the military prison.
Special thanks to Judicial Watch’s director of public affairs, Jill Farrell, for her continued help and valuable information.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the transformation of the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay into a prison for holding presumed terrorists from the war on terror — but there’s almost nobody left in Washington officialdom still trying to close Gitmo, and one leading proponent of closing the prison says President Barack Obama‘s team never really tried.
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) was one of the congressional leaders of the movement to fulfill Obama’s Jan. 22, 2009, signed order to close the Guantanamo prison. In an interview today with The Cable, Moran said the administration never supported its allies in Congress when the attempt to close the prison came to a head — and then the administration abandoned the effort altogether. As the election season progresses, Moran said, Congress keeps passing laws that will keep the prison open and the administration seems to have no intention of fighting back.
“There were a few of us who were willing to fight the issue…. We were trying to get help from the administration in terms of factual talking points and in terms of the administration saying this is important to us. But we just didn’t get that support,” Moran said of the Democratic efforts, which were led by him, then Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey (D-WI), Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), and others.
Moran said that three years of GOP-driven congressional action successfully tied the administration’s hands on closing the prison. These measures included provisions that barred funding for moving prisoners to U.S. soil, barred funding for building an alternative facility, and required extensive certifications of prisoners’ innocence before moving them.
But the administration never really fought those provisions in a serious way, leaving congressional Democrats who wanted to fight to close Gitmo twisting in the wind. When laws containing such provisions got to the House floor, the administration wouldn’t even provide Moran and his allies talking points, one of the steps they regularly take to help lawmakers defend administration priorities, Moran said.
“I can only speculate that the problem was a more political one than a policy one,” Moran said, adding that these types of decisions are typically made by the political team at the White House. “My sense is, they’ve given up on this. I guess I don’t blame him. This is one of those issues where the Republicans are just waiting for [Obama] to stand on principle so they can pounce all over him.”
The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress recently passed, established that U.S. citizens can be held indefinitely on terrorism charges. Obama reluctantly signed that bill into law, but issued a signing statement expressing his intention to implement that provision as he saw fit.
“I’m confident that the House will never provide the legislation he needs to close [the Guantanamo prison] and if he tries to, it will be an excuse to come up with even more severe legislation to make sure that he doesn’t,” said Moran.
Proponents of keeping the prison open claim that 25 percent of prisoners have returned to terrorism.
Do remember who Ronald Reagan decided to deal with when he was in office? Reagan laid down with some pretty nasty dogs and he got up with these nasty Persian fleas. Persian fleas that we are still being bit by some 30 years later on a nuclear scale. This is a dangerous mistake, making deals with any terrorist, be it a nation or a person always ends in more terror at home as well as in the dog bed.
For over a year we have seen Obama’s DOJ thugster, Eric Holder dealing with the violent Mexican Drug cartels, that is already led to the murder of a federal agent in the cover-up of the Fast and Furious scandal.
Now he is going to step up the subversion and talk to the Taliban. The same M-effers responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of US Soldiers sent to fight these illegal, unconstitutional, undeclared wars of the progressives in their pursuit of an alleged ‘Utopian social justice’.
The US has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantánamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents’ agreement to open a political office for peace negotiations in Qatar, the Guardian has learned.
According to sources familiar with the talks in the US and in Afghanistan, the handful of Taliban figures will include Mullah Khair Khowa, a former interior minister, and Noorullah Noori, a former governor in northern Afghanistan.
More controversially, the Taliban are demanding the release of the former army commander Mullah Fazl Akhund. Washington is reported to be considering formally handing him over to the custody of another country, possibly Qatar.
The releases would be to reciprocate for Tuesday’s announcement from the Taliban that they are prepared to open a political office in Qatar to conduct peace negotiations “with the international community” – the most significant political breakthrough in ten years of the Afghan conflict.
The Taliban are holding just one American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, a 25-year-old sergeant captured in June 2009, but it is not clear whether he would be freed as part of the deal.
The following is from the detested and much hated and for GREAT REASON.. ACLU.
They have been known to get it right once or twice. Let us hope they maintain the correct view on this as well.
NEW YORK – President Obama today issued an executive order that permits ongoing indefinite detention of Guantánamo detainees while establishing a periodic administrative review process for them. The administration also announced it will lift the ban on bringing new military commissions charges against detainees that don’t already have ongoing cases in the substandard system.
The American Civil Liberties Union has long called for Guantánamo to be shut down and opposes the indefinite detention of prisoners there, some of whom have been imprisoned by the U.S. without charge or trial for nine years. The ACLU has also long called for an end to the illegitimate military commissions and for the government to prosecute terrorism suspects in the federal criminal courts.
The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU:
“The best way to get America out of the Guantánamo morass is to use the most effective and reliable tool we have: our criminal justice system. Instead, the Obama administration has done just the opposite and chosen to institutionalize unlawful indefinite detention – creating a troubling ‘new normal’ – and to revive the illegitimate Guantánamo military commissions.
“While appearing to be a step in the right direction, providing more process to Guantánamo detainees is just window dressing for the reality that today’s executive order institutionalizes indefinite detention, which is unlawful, unwise and un-American. The detention of Guantánamo detainees for nine years without charge or trial is a stain on America’s reputation that should be ended immediately, not given a stamp of approval. Moreover, the procedures for providing more process are flawed as they vest too much discretion and power in the Secretary of Defense, essentially asking the fox to guard the hen house.
“Even with recent improvements, the military commissions rules are inadequate under established criminal law and international law. Where credible evidence exists against Guantánamo detainees, they should be charged and prosecuted in our federal courts, which have a proven record of prosecuting terrorism suspects and are the only way to provide the fair and reliable outcomes that Americans deserve.
“The only way to restore the rule of law is to put an end to indefinite detention at Guantánamo and the broken commissions system, and to prosecute terrorism suspects in federal criminal courts. Today’s announcement takes us back a step when we should be moving forward toward closing Guantánamo and ending its shameful policies.”
The blabbermouth media formed a stampede over the weekend in a rush to publish a new round of Wikileaks documents on al Qaeda and Guantanamo Bay.
The Memeorandum round-up is here and the breathless tick-tock on how lib outlets stepped all over each other to get the “scoops” is here.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air says “Meh,” noting “these revelations don’t reveal much at all about AQ plots in the past, nor their operations today. The most recent data in either report is years old. They are both interesting for purposes of background information, but neither tells much of a story on its own or together that we didn’t already know.”
Let me give you a case in point: The New York Times’ story today on how Gitmo detainees coordinated suicide stunts to try to shut the facility down.
Against that backdrop, a collection of secret detainee assessment files obtained by The New York Times reveal that the threat of suicide has created a chronic tension at the prison — a tactic frequently discussed by the captives and a constant fear for their captors.
The files for about two dozen detainees refer to suicide attempts or threats. Others mention informants who pass on rumors about which prisoner had volunteered to kill himself next and efforts to organize suicide attempts. Two prisoners were overheard weighing whether it would create enough time for someone to end his life if fellow prisoners blocked their cell windows, distracting guards who would have to remove the obstructions.
While medical officials struggled to keep hunger strikers alive, other officials were on constant alert for signs of trouble. In May 2008, a detainee ordered fellow prisoners to “stop singing that song; we will sing it on Monday when our brothers leave.” His file noted: “It was assessed he meant planning suicide attempts.”
…Several later assessments of other detainees make references to the three suicides. One such file, for example, mentions in passing that a prisoner reported that another detainee had told him “he had been approached and recruited by the three detainees who had committed suicide.”
And Mr. Ahmed’s brother, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, who was also a detainee until his repatriation in 2009, wrote to a family member depicting Mr. Ahmed “as a martyr,” according to an assessment. An analyst concluded that both brothers “viewed the suicide as a continuance of their jihad against the US.”
Gitmo sympathizers continue to characterize the suicides/suicide attempts as acts of desperation by poor, innocent potato farmers and bystanders. But these were clear acts of asymmetric warfare by cunning, cold-blooded jihadists versed in exploitation of Western sensibilities.
I said so all throughout 2005 and 2006, when the Close Gitmo cult was in full force during the Bush years.
The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn.
The Gitmo facility continues to create controversy for the Obama Administration. Photo: DoD
The 9/11 co-conspirators will be tried by a military tribunal, and prosecutors from the Department of Justice were ordered by a visibly upset Attorney General Eric Holder to assist the chief prosecutor from the Office of Military Commissions,
“The fact that the 9-11 accused terrorists will now face military tribunals is long overdue and despite the Attorney General’s flawed logic, it is the proper venue to try these accused terrorists,” said Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law & Justice.
This means the prosecutions of the alleged conspirators in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C, and Pennsylvania – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammed Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Bin Al Shibh, Ali Abdul-Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Al Hawsawi –- will be referred to military prosecutors at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military installation and detention center.
Navy Captain John Murphy, chief prosecutor of the OMC, said that in light of the attorney general’s decision, his office intends to swear charges against the men in the near future. “I intend to recommend the charges be sent to a military commission for a joint trial,” he said in a written statement.
The trials will take place under the Military Commissions Act of 2009, and the captain stressed that just as in civilian trials, those accused are presumed innocent until their guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt, according to Jim Garamone of the American Forces Press Service.
In a decision reversing current policy, Holder blamed Congress for forcing him to use military tribunals to try the terror suspects — including alleged 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — and said he is reluctantly agreeing to using military commissions in order to move the judicial process along.
“What’s unimaginable is the fact that the Attorney General still believes the federal court system is the proper venue to try accused terrorists and is blaming Congress for getting involved,” said Jordan Sekulow, Attorney and Director of International Operations of the ACLJ.
“It’s clear that many members of Congress and most Americans understand the truth — President Obama’s judicial strategy to place these terror suspects in civilian courts is seriously flawed. We have heard from more than 100,000 Americans who called for these trials to take place in military tribunals – clearly the proper venue for justice,” said Sekulow.
The suspected terrorists will be tried at the Expeditionary Legal Complex at Guantanamo Naval Station in Cuba, a facility designed for just such a proceeding.
Attorney General Eric Holder said that he believes the trials could have been held in New York or Virginia, but that Congress imposed restrictions on where the trial could be held, taking the decision from his hands. However, a clear majority of Americans and counterterrorism experts including former prosecutors who have tried terrorism cases believe that military commissions are preferable for trying the five 9-11 suspects.
“Those restrictions are unlikely to be repealed in the immediate future,” the attorney general said.
Did Obama promise that Gitmo would be shutdown over a year ago? Where is the outrage and demonstrations from left over this policy reversal? These trials are supposed to take place in military tribunals in Gitmo. From Fox News:
A formal announcement is expected by Attorney General Eric Holder later in the day. The decision is a turn-around after Holder said in November 2009 that he had decided the conspirators — Mohammed, Walid Muhammed Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Bin Al Shibh, Ali Abdul-Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Al Hawsawi — should be prosecuted in civilian court. . . .
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