Gold9472
05-26-2009, 07:30 AM
Obama weighs 9/11 case options, official says
President Barack Obama is considering trying in federal court five men, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, accused of planning the 9/11 attacks.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/1065342.html
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com
5/26/2009
President Barack Obama is still deciding whether to go to federal court with the death-penalty cases against five men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a Defense Department official has notified the thousands of victim family members.
Meantime, a Pentagon-led prosecution team is using a White House freeze in war-court proceedings to line up family members as witnesses in the 9/11 case and the USS Cole bombing, in the event that Obama decides to go forward with military trials.
E-MAIL
"As of now, the President has not decided whether to continue the prosecution of the 9/11 or the USS Cole cases in military commissions, or to move one or both of the cases to federal court. Until such a decision is made, we will continue to be your primary point of contact" about those cases, said retired Navy Capt. Karen Loftus in an e-mail dated Friday and posted on 9/11 victim websites.
Now a civilian, Loftus had served as liaison to victim families during the Bush administration. She signed last week's letter as director of the Pentagon prosecutor's ''Victim Witness Program."
Prosecutors would be disseminating the news, she said, in summertime meetings with families in Norfolk, Va., Orlando and West Palm Beach, as well as Manhattan. Norfolk is the home port of the Cole, on which 17 U.S. sailors died in an October 2000 al Qaeda suicide bombing off Yemen.
Military prosecutors have used such meetings in the past to defend the commissions system against international and human-rights criticism. In this next session, the new chief war-crimes prosecutor, Navy Reserves Capt. John Murphy, will be able to argue that former critic Obama is now an advocate.
Obama said in a detention-policy speech last week that five proposed changes in the system would reform "the flawed commissions of the last seven years" to "a more credible and effective means of administering justice." The changes, being circulated in Congress, were made in the office of Obama's new Pentagon general counsel, Jeh Johnson.
DEFENDANTS
As a civilian Justice Department prosecutor, Murphy had worked with the Pentagon on war-crimes cases once President Bush directed the CIA to move alleged 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other Sept. 11 accused to Guantánamo for trial. Now that Obama has decided to use that format to prosecute some cases, Murphy will be running the office that prosecutes any military case.
A military judge froze the 9/11 case in January, at the request of the White House. At the time, the military judge had sought legal briefs on whether the accused could enter guilty pleas before a commission was seated and a determination on whether at least one of the five accused was sane enough to have a trial. Yet to be determined also was what information about Mohammed's waterboarding in CIA custody could be used at trial.
Mohammed had said he would confess to the crime and said he welcomed martyrdom.
Obama said new commissions would ban "statements that have been obtained using cruel, inhuman or degrading interrogation methods" but left unclear whether prosecutors could use statements of the accused after they were subjected to such treatment.
The Cole case was to involve a single prosecution of Abd el Rahim al Nashiri, a Yemeni whose waterboarding the CIA has also confirmed. But the Pentagon canceled that prosecution on the eve of Nashiri's war-court arraignment to give the new administration time to decide where to try him.
'JUSTICE DENIED'
The Pentagon had sought to execute Nashiri if he is convicted, and the warship's former commander has been an angry critic of the Obama administration's delaying action.
"Justice delayed is justice denied," said retired Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, an advocate of the military trials with the lobby Military Families United.
President Barack Obama is considering trying in federal court five men, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, accused of planning the 9/11 attacks.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/1065342.html
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com
5/26/2009
President Barack Obama is still deciding whether to go to federal court with the death-penalty cases against five men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a Defense Department official has notified the thousands of victim family members.
Meantime, a Pentagon-led prosecution team is using a White House freeze in war-court proceedings to line up family members as witnesses in the 9/11 case and the USS Cole bombing, in the event that Obama decides to go forward with military trials.
"As of now, the President has not decided whether to continue the prosecution of the 9/11 or the USS Cole cases in military commissions, or to move one or both of the cases to federal court. Until such a decision is made, we will continue to be your primary point of contact" about those cases, said retired Navy Capt. Karen Loftus in an e-mail dated Friday and posted on 9/11 victim websites.
Now a civilian, Loftus had served as liaison to victim families during the Bush administration. She signed last week's letter as director of the Pentagon prosecutor's ''Victim Witness Program."
Prosecutors would be disseminating the news, she said, in summertime meetings with families in Norfolk, Va., Orlando and West Palm Beach, as well as Manhattan. Norfolk is the home port of the Cole, on which 17 U.S. sailors died in an October 2000 al Qaeda suicide bombing off Yemen.
Military prosecutors have used such meetings in the past to defend the commissions system against international and human-rights criticism. In this next session, the new chief war-crimes prosecutor, Navy Reserves Capt. John Murphy, will be able to argue that former critic Obama is now an advocate.
Obama said in a detention-policy speech last week that five proposed changes in the system would reform "the flawed commissions of the last seven years" to "a more credible and effective means of administering justice." The changes, being circulated in Congress, were made in the office of Obama's new Pentagon general counsel, Jeh Johnson.
DEFENDANTS
As a civilian Justice Department prosecutor, Murphy had worked with the Pentagon on war-crimes cases once President Bush directed the CIA to move alleged 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other Sept. 11 accused to Guantánamo for trial. Now that Obama has decided to use that format to prosecute some cases, Murphy will be running the office that prosecutes any military case.
A military judge froze the 9/11 case in January, at the request of the White House. At the time, the military judge had sought legal briefs on whether the accused could enter guilty pleas before a commission was seated and a determination on whether at least one of the five accused was sane enough to have a trial. Yet to be determined also was what information about Mohammed's waterboarding in CIA custody could be used at trial.
Mohammed had said he would confess to the crime and said he welcomed martyrdom.
Obama said new commissions would ban "statements that have been obtained using cruel, inhuman or degrading interrogation methods" but left unclear whether prosecutors could use statements of the accused after they were subjected to such treatment.
The Cole case was to involve a single prosecution of Abd el Rahim al Nashiri, a Yemeni whose waterboarding the CIA has also confirmed. But the Pentagon canceled that prosecution on the eve of Nashiri's war-court arraignment to give the new administration time to decide where to try him.
'JUSTICE DENIED'
The Pentagon had sought to execute Nashiri if he is convicted, and the warship's former commander has been an angry critic of the Obama administration's delaying action.
"Justice delayed is justice denied," said retired Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, an advocate of the military trials with the lobby Military Families United.