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Thread: Key 9/11 Suspect To Be Tried In New York

  1. #31
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    Report: Fearing death penalty, Berlin to send team to 9-11 trial

    http://www.monstersandcritics.com/ne...-to-9-11-trial

    Europe News
    Nov 21, 2009, 10:32 GMT

    Berlin - The German government is to send observers to New York to ensure that evidence it provided in the case against five men accused of masterminding the September 11, 2001 attacks does not lead to them receiving the death penalty, news magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

    On November 13, the US Justice Department announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men would be tried in a federal court - and that the government was seeking the death penalty should they be convicted.

    Members of the al-Qaeda cell including Mohamed Atta that led the suicide attacks on New York and Washington were based in the northern German city of Hamburg in the period leading up to the event.

    Germany, which does not have a death penalty, has provided items of evidence for the trial on the condition that a possible death sentence would not be based on their materials.

    'In this case we will observe very closely that the given assurances (by the US government) are kept,' Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said.

    However, it was not clear how a distinction would, or could, be drawn between German and other evidence leading to a conviction and death penalty.

    In the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen serving a life sentence in the US for his failed part in the September 11 attacks, German-provided evidence was only admitted in the first phase of the trial, and not in the preparation of the sentencing.

    The defence lawyer for Sheikh Mohammed's co-accused Ramzi Binalshibh said that a conviction of his client would 'scarcely be possible without evidence from Germany.'

    A trial based on the Moussaoui example, where German evidence was not admitted in the sentencing phase was an 'artificial distinction, which does not exist in reality,' Speigel quoted Thomas Durkin as saying.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  2. #32
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    Our view on prosecuting terror suspects: Unsettling choice for 9/11 trial has one big plus
    Defendants are getting more than they deserve, but it won’t likely help them.

    http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/...-big-plus.html

    11/21/2009

    For eight years now, the government has struggled unsuccessfully for a perfect way to try and punish terrorists — a task for which neither the civilian courts nor the military justice system was designed. So it's hardly a surprise that the decision to try accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants in federal court in New York — and five other terror suspects before military commissions — produced a week of acrimonious debate. That was inevitable. The good news, perhaps too little noted, is that years of impotent wrangling are over. The terrorists accused of the 2001 atrocities will be tried and, barring some spectacular failure, suitably punished.

    To be sure, the decision to split jurisdiction is discomforting, particularly on the civilian side. Terrorists caught abroad after plotting acts of war are not inherently entitled to all the rights accorded U.S. citizens, and treating them as such is unsettling, both on a gut level and as precedent. Attorney General Eric Holder stumbled repeatedly when pressed at a hearing Wednesday by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on whether Osama bin Laden, if captured, would have to be read Miranda rights, provided a lawyer and tried in a court. "That all depends," Holder said at one point. A convincing "no" would have been better.

    The military commissions, meanwhile, will be messy in other ways. They've been overhauled twice for constitutional reasons, and even with protections built in to protect intelligence and such, the government is not comfortable trying all the prisoners it holds before them, or anywhere else.

    As we said, it's all messy and uncomfortable. But some of the angst over Holder's decision is also overdone, particularly the hand-wringing from critics who seem to think we should cower in fear at the prospect of publicly trying the self-described 9/11 ringleader. Previous experience suggests advantages.

    The accused plotters will be tried within blocks of the World Trade Center by a jury of New Yorkers. That is totally appropriate.

    Yes, there is a prospect of endless legal motions for changes of venue or excluding coerced evidence. There's slight potential to reveal classified information. The jurors and judge will have to be guarded. And there will surely be rounds of appeals.

    But none of that is new. And why would anyone fear the storyline?

    Would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui and Ramzi Yousef, the perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, are all in prison after federal trials that made them look like exactly what they are: soulless killers. Should Mohammed try to exploit the legal protections of the system he claims to despise, he'll look like a fool.

    Nor should anyone fear that he will walk. Holder says he has an airtight case, and it's hard to believe the Justice Department would go forward if it didn't. If by some far-fetched chance Mohammed were acquitted, he could be tried on other charges or held as an enemy combatant.

    As for Mohammed using the trial to inspire hatred, he might well try. But among civilized people, his rantings are no match for the prosecution's story of 3,000 innocent people who woke up one clear September morning, went to work or boarded planes and were sent to horrible deaths by his hand.

    Ideally, Congress would have devised a third way — a national security court to prosecute terrorism cases that don't fit in military or federal court. Former federal judge and attorney general Michael Mukasey has been suggesting that since 2007.

    Instead we're left with two systems, both valuable, each somewhat wanting. Holder said he will use both. That's what he's got.

    It's fair to ask whether any other country would go through so much angst, so many debates, so much soul-searching to put on trial its most heinous enemies. But in doing so and then trying the accused mastermind of 9/11 in open court, America leaves no doubt that above all, it values the rule of law.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  3. #33
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    The Washington Post’s Dueling 9/11-Trial Op-eds, Condensed

    http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/11...dueling_9.html

    11/20/2009

    Today the Washington Post runs two opposing op-eds on the topic of whether Eric Holder is making a wise decision in bringing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to New York to stand trial. In the interest of your precious time and energy, we've boiled the arguments of columnist Charles Krauthammer and former Bush administration Justice Department officials Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith into their five most salient points. Memorize them for when the argument inevitably breaks out during Thanksgiving dinner!

    Charles Krauthammer (not a fan of the decision):
    • KSM has "been presented with the greatest propaganda platform imaginable."
    • Holder's certainty that KSM will be convicted makes the trial a farce.
    • A conviction was guaranteed in a military tribunal.
    • The trial will be a security nightmare — both in terms of protecting the city and the exposure of intelligence secrets.
    • It creates an incentive for killing Americans on American soil, by prosecuting such acts in a federal court, as opposed to a military tribunal.


    Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith (they like it):
    • New York won't be any more of a target for terrorists than it already is.
    • Unlike federal courts, military commissions are fraught with legal uncertainty.
    • Federal courts were used to put away "dozens of terrorists," many for life, under the Bush administration.
    • Defendants won't be able to make an argument about their legal rights being infringed upon.
    • "The potential procedural advantages of military commission trials are relatively unimportant with obviously guilty defendants such as Mohammed."
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  4. #34
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    Lawyer: 9/11 defendants want platform for views

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091122/...ial_defendants

    By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer Karen Matthews, Associated Press Writer – 47 mins ago

    NEW YORK – The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

    Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it."

    The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center.

    Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

    Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy," Fenstermaker said.

    "Their assessment is negative," he said.

    Fenstermaker met with Ali last week at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He has not spoken with the others but said the men have discussed the trial among themselves.

    Fenstermaker was first quoted in The New York Times in Sunday's editions.

    Critics of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try the men in a New York City civilian courthouse have warned that the trial would provide the defendants with a propaganda platform.

    Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said Sunday that while the men may attempt to use the trial to express their views, "we have full confidence in the ability of the courts and in particular the federal judge who may preside over the trial to ensure that the proceeding is conducted appropriately and with minimal disruption, as federal courts have done in the past."

    Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Holder for hours about his decision to send the five 9/11 suspects to New York for trial.

    Critics of Holder's decision — mostly Republicans — argued the trial will give Mohammed and his co-defendants a world stage to spout hateful rhetoric. Holder said such concerns are misplaced, and any pronouncements by the suspects would only make them look worse.

    "I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is," Holder told the committee. "I'm not scared of what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has to say at trial — and no one else needs to be, either."

    The attorney general said he does not believe holding the trial in New York — at a federal courthouse that has seen a number of high-profile terrorism trials in recent decades — will increase the risk of terror attacks there.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  5. #35
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    If there is a God, please let them say, "we did what the Americans wanted us to..."
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  6. #36
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    Brown: Giuliani 'wants to keep 9/11 alive'

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/politi...e.html?showall

    11/22/2009

    Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) ripped Rudy Giuliani Sunday, saying that the former New York City mayor "wants to keep 9/11 alive" in order to further his political ambitions.

    Speaking on TV One's "Washington Watch," Brown said Giuliani plans to "quietly" announce a bid for the Senate soon and could use the terrorist attacks eight years ago as a key issue in his campaign.

    Brown also took Giuliani to task for his disapproval of the Obama administration's decision to move supposed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's trial to New York.

    "The big difference is that Rudy Giuliani is talking about Barack Obama rather than George Bush," Brown said.

    "This is the right way to do it," Brown said of the civilian trial. "He’ll get a fair trial. Let him go in front of the American legal system, and I think justice will be done."
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  7. #37
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    Germans weasel in on 9/11 trial

    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/interna...LzHomP3ehgkHpO

    By ADAM NICHOLS
    Last Updated: 10:50 AM, November 22, 2009

    Fearing for the lives of the 9/11 fiends, the German government will send a team of observers to the New York terror trials to make sure evidence by its agents doesn't lead to the death penalty.

    Germany, which bans the death penalty, will have a team at the trial of admitted atrocity mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed (right) and four of his al Qaeda henchmen. The evidence gathered by German investigators could lead to death sentences.

    In fact, it's unlikely US prosecutors have any chance of convicting the 9/11 monsters without the Germans' proof, an attorney for one of the suspects said yesterday.

    A conviction "would scarcely be possible without evidence from Germany," the lawyer, who represents Ramzi Binalshibh, told the German broadcast network Deutsche Welle. The network did not identify the lawyer.

    Three of the four pilots who carried out the 9/11 attacks had formed a cell while living in Hamburg, Germany.

    German investigators handed over evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence -- which the US government has said it intends to seek if the five are found guilty.

    President Obama last week said that he expects Mohammed will be put to death.

    But Germany's Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told Deutsche Welle, "In this case, we will observe very closely that the given assurances are kept."

    It's unclear how evidence gathered in Germany could be distinguished from that gathered elsewhere.

    No trial date has been set for the five terror thugs, who are to be shipped from Guantanamo Bay to New York.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  8. #38
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    Poll finds broad support among New Yorkers for death penalty in Khalid Shaikh Mohammed terror case

    http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...rror_case.html

    BY Robert Johnson and David Saltonstall
    daily news writers
    Sunday, November 22nd 2009, 4:00 AM

    An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers believe the terrorist thugs who planned the 9/11 attacks should and will be sentenced to death - and two-thirds of city residents say they'd be unafraid to serve on the jury.

    An exclusive Daily News/Marist poll found that 77% of New Yorkers agree with President Obama that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his four cowardly cohorts will be found guilty in a Manhattan federal courtroom.

    "If I'm on that jury, there's no doubt they get a conviction - no doubt," said Larry Amandola, 48, an electrician from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and one of a dozen regular New Yorkers interviewed separately by The News. "I had a few friends who died on Sept. 11 and I worked [at Ground Zero] immediately after. The people that suffered through this have a right to judge them."

    The poll of 811 city residents, conducted Wednesday and Thursday by The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion for The News, did find New Yorkers more evenly split on some underlying policy issues.

    For instance, 47% of New Yorkers said they agreed with Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try the 9/11 plotters in a civilian court here rather than a military court. Nearly as many - 41% - disagreed with Holder, and 12% said they were unsure. The poll's margin of error was 3.5 percentage points.

    Critics - chief among them former Mayor Rudy Giuliani - have argued that a civilian court trial is needlessly risky and expensive for the city and grants the accused too many rights.

    But with the decision made, most New Yorkers seem eager to send their own message to the thugs who brought down the Twin Towers:

    It's payback time.

    "Those guys don't stand a chance," said Henry Romer, 51, a construction manager in midtown Manhattan. "There's no question they'll get the death penalty here."

    "New York will get it done, because the families of the people that died won't let them do anything else," added Calvin Seibert, 51, an artist who lives in Chelsea. "It's just what you have to do. We can't let them down."

    The poll found some apprehension about an Al Qaeda trial here. Fifty-two percent said they were concerned it will increase the city's risk of a terror attack, while 45% said they were not worried.

    "This is going to bring more problems and more terrorists and more threats," said Cecilio Rodriguez, 30, an engineer from Flatbush.

    Despite those fears, a solid 69% expressed confidence that a city jury would return the unanimous verdict required to sentence the accused terrorists to death.

    And New Yorkers are equally ready to stand up and be counted: More than two-thirds said they would not be afraid to serve as a juror in the case.

    "I'd be eager to sit on the jury and hear the whole story, to see history happen," said Louisa Alsen, 19, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

    An even larger 73% of those polled said ringleader Mohammed should be put to death for his crimes if convicted, and 67% said his four co-defendants should also pay the ultimate price.

    And though a minority still doubt a jury in left-leaning New York would ever return a sentence of death, there is overwhelming agreement that justice would be served - one way or another.

    "I don't think they're gonna get the death penalty in New York, and that's okay," said William Nieves, 27, a bakery driver from Hell's Kitchen. "They should serve life sentences because it's a worse punishment ...[Jail] will be worse than Hell. Guards, prisoners, everyone will be after them."

    Steven Stegman, 67, an attorney who worked on Liberty Street when the towers came down, has no doubt New Yorkers will rise to the task of delivering justice.

    "I would love to see them convicted in New York," Stegman said. "It's poetic justice ...New York can do this."
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  9. #39
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    Brown: Giuliani 'wants to keep 9/11 alive'

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/politi...e.html?showall

    11/22/2009

    Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) ripped Rudy Giuliani Sunday, saying that the former New York City mayor "wants to keep 9/11 alive" in order to further his political ambitions.

    Speaking on TV One's "Washington Watch," Brown said Giuliani plans to "quietly" announce a bid for the Senate soon and could use the terrorist attacks eight years ago as a key issue in his campaign.

    Brown also took Giuliani to task for his disapproval of the Obama administration's decision to move supposed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's trial to New York.

    "The big difference is that Rudy Giuliani is talking about Barack Obama rather than George Bush," Brown said.

    "This is the right way to do it," Brown said of the civilian trial. "He’ll get a fair trial. Let him go in front of the American legal system, and I think justice will be done."
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  10. #40
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    Lawyer: 9/11 defendants want platform for views

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091122/...ial_defendants

    By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer Karen Matthews, Associated Press Writer – Sun Nov 22, 5:28 pm ET

    NEW YORK – The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

    Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it."

    The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center.

    Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

    Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy," Fenstermaker said.

    "Their assessment is negative," he said.

    Fenstermaker met with Ali last week at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He has not spoken with the others but said the men have discussed the trial among themselves.

    Fenstermaker was first quoted in The New York Times in Sunday's editions.

    Critics of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try the men in a New York City civilian courthouse have warned that the trial would provide the defendants with a propaganda platform.

    Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said Sunday that while the men may attempt to use the trial to express their views, "we have full confidence in the ability of the courts and in particular the federal judge who may preside over the trial to ensure that the proceeding is conducted appropriately and with minimal disruption, as federal courts have done in the past."

    Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Holder for hours about his decision to send the five 9/11 suspects to New York for trial.

    Critics of Holder's decision — mostly Republicans — argued the trial will give Mohammed and his co-defendants a world stage to spout hateful rhetoric. Holder said such concerns are misplaced, and any pronouncements by the suspects would only make them look worse.

    "I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is," Holder told the committee. "I'm not scared of what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has to say at trial — and no one else needs to be, either."

    The attorney general said he does not believe holding the trial in New York — at a federal courthouse that has seen a number of high-profile terrorism trials in recent decades — will increase the risk of terror attacks there.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


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