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Ex-Gitmo Detainee Ahmed Ghailani Cleared of All but One Charge in U.S. Embassy Bombings
Published November 17, 2010 | FoxNews.com
Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani was found not guilty on all but one charge Wednesday by a civilian jury in New York, in a case with ramifications for President Obama's policy toward Guantanamo and civilian trials for terror suspects.
Ghailani was acquitted in federal court on more than 280 charges in connection with the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, including one murder count for each of the 224 people killed. He was found guilty for only one charge, conspiracy to destroy government buildings.
Ghailani faces a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a possible life sentence. He will remain in custody and sentencing will take place on Jan. 25, 2011.
The acquittal is seen as a major blow to the U.S. government, as Ghailani was the first former Gitmo detainee to be tried in a civilian courtroom. The case had been viewed as a possible test case for President Barack Obama administration's aim of putting other terror detainees -- including self-professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- on trial on U.S. soil.
The anonymous federal jury deliberated over seven days, with a juror writing a note to the judge saying she felt threatened by other jurors.
Prosecutors had branded Ghailani a cold-blooded terrorist. The defense portrayed him as a clueless errand boy, exploited by senior Al Qaeda operatives and framed by evidence from contaminated crime scenes.
The judge had earlier decided that a star witness would not be allowed to testify because the witness was identified while Ghailani was held at a secret CIA camp that used harsh interrogation techniques. It is unknown what effect this witness would have had on the case.
Prosecutors had alleged Ghailani helped an Al Qaeda cell buy a truck and components for explosives used in a suicide bombing in his native Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998. The attack in Dar es Salaam and a nearly simultaneous bombing in Nairobi, Kenya, killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
The day before the bombings, Ghailani boarded a one-way flight to Pakistan under an alias, prosecutors said. While on the run, he spent time in Afghanistan as a cook and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and later as a document forger for Al Qaeda, authorities said.
He was captured in 2004 in Pakistan and held by the CIA at a secret overseas camp. In 2006, he was transferred to Guantanamo and held until the decision last year to bring him to New York.
Despite losing its key witness, the government was given broad latitude to reference Al Qaeda and bin Laden. It did -- again and again.
"This is Ahmed Ghailani. This is Al Qaeda. This is a terrorist. This is a killer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Chernoff said in closing arguments.
The jury heard a former Al Qaeda member who has cooperated with the government describe how bin Laden took the group in a more radical direction with a 1998 fatwa, or religious edict, against Americans.
Bin Laden accused the United States of killing innocent women and children in the Middle East and decided "we should do the same," L'Houssaine Kherchtou said on the witness stand.
A prosecutor read aloud the fatwa, which called on Muslims to rise up and "kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they can find it."
Other witnesses described how Ghailani bought gas tanks used in the truck bomb with cash supplied by the terror group, how the FBI found a blasting cap stashed in his room at a cell hideout and how he lied to family members about his escape, telling them he was going to Yemen to start a new life.
The defense never contested that Ghailani knew some of the plotters. But it claimed he was in the dark about their sinister intentions.
"Call him a fall guy. Call him a pawn," lawyer Peter Quijano said in his closing argument. "But don't call him guilty."
Quijano argued the investigation in Africa was too chaotic to produce reliable evidence. He said local authorities and the FBI "trampled all over" unsecured crime scenes during searches in Tanzania
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/11/17/gitmo-detainee-ahmed-ghailani-guilty-terrorism-charges/
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Obama's Terror Trial Policy? DOA.
Neoavatara ^ | November 17, 2010 | Neoavatara
Posted on Wednesday, November 17, 2010 9:16:45 PM by Neoavatara
Does it get any worse than this?
From the New York Times:
The first former Guantánamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court was acquitted on Wednesday of all but one of more than 280 charges of conspiracy and murder in the 1998 terrorist bombings of the United States Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The case has been seen as a test of President Obama’s goal of trying detainees in federal court whenever feasible, and the result may again fuel debate over whether civilian courts are appropriate for trying terrorists.
This is a failure of epic proportions . Obama rode into office two years ago, promising immediate closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by moving the terrorists to a facility within the United States, and then trying them under federal statutes. 2 years later, Gitmo remains not only open, but under no threat of closing any time during the Obama First term.
(Excerpt) Read more at neoavatara.com ...
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Not to gloat or make light of the fact that both of us know about law and predicted a similar outcome, but where are all of the liberal fucksticks who said that nothing like this could ever happen and that it was guaranteed that none of the detainees would see the light of day?
Presumably because our brilliant AG and President anticipated all of the potential legal pitfalls that would result in trying Al Queda members in American civilian court rooms? ::)
Do any of you morons still think a civilian trial for KSM is a good idea?
W/o going conspiracy theory SAMSON ape dung-- Do you think that this is being done on purpose? Ideology above justice? A symbolic branch extended to the far left base to justify all of the numerous shortcomings with regard to foreign and domestic policy?
Just something to consider.
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IMO, these d-bags would have walked whether the trial took place in 2008 or 2010.
That's why bush just kicked the can down the road. next guys' problem.
It was a lack of evidence, correct?
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Sorry but LMFAO
wheres 240 with his "they will get convicted no matter where they get tried"
LOL come on 240 come comment on your saviors latest accomplishment
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IMO, these d-bags would have walked whether the trial took place in 2008 or 2010.
That's why bush just kicked the can down the road. next guys' problem.
It was a lack of evidence, correct?
LMAOOOOOOOOOOO- What TRIAL!?!?!? There weren't supposed to be any fucking trials. A military tribunal isn't a trial! There are no rules of evidence, no presumption of innocence, no jury and no discovery. That is the point. I would normally ignore your blatant hypocrisy, dishonesty and stupidity but this takes the cake. Bush wanted military tribunals; that's why Guantanamo was established in the first place. It was only after douchebag liberal lawyers like our esteemed AG started suing, our douchebag supreme court overruled 50 years of precedent, and Bush left office, that this comedy of legal incompetence was allowed to move forward.
Bush had the right idea. Everyone else was fucking clueless.
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Bush had the right idea. Everyone else was fucking clueless.
I guess what I'm not seeing is - why weren't these bad guy fed to the sharks in the 7+ years that Bush had them?
I mean, he didn't give a shit about invading countries, torture, etc - but somehow he was powerless to prosecute bad guys? i guess that's what is unclear to me. If I'm Bush - don't I realize around 2006 that things aren't looking good for GOP in 08 - and tried these guys?
I dunno...
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At one point in time i was in favor of bringing ksm to nyc to stand trial for symbolic reasons. It was a point of view based on emotions most likely. I thought, there is no chance in hell he could walk away innocent. Which is probably correct, however its not the sensible move. Why waste the time, money and most importantly, give ksm that stage? Put him through the military tribunal and be done with it.
im baffled why ghailani was given a chance to go through trial.
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i'm baffled why they didn't accidentally sink the boat on the way to trial.
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or slipped and bumped his head when he was caught.
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HOLY SHIT
what didn't the jury hear ?
this guy must be guilty of something
right??
???
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ummmmm, didn't he get a minimum of 20 years?
20 year minimum = getting off?
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ummmmm, didn't he get a minimum of 20 years?
20 year minimum = getting off?
Where will he serve his sentence?
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The guy is probably getting a life sentance.
He was tried and found guilty.
And like the Nürnberg trials, this holds legitimacy.
So this is IMHO a big step forward actually.
The whole situation that Bush started with Guantanamo and torturing is a mess.
It has to be handled somehow.
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Please. This verdict is a joke. Anyone who has a clue knows that it is ridiculous to convict someone for conspiracy but not for the resultant crimes. This is total nonsense.
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Please. This verdict is a joke. Anyone who has a clue knows that it is ridiculous to convict someone for conspiracy but not for the resultant crimes. This is total nonsense.
Maybe they couldn't convict him beyond reasonable doubt.
And then they did what they should.
Your reaction is that it's something bad when this happen.
My reaction is quite the opposite.
I believe it shows that the law actually functions. That jurors, that no doubt wanted to sentence this terrorist, were able to look at the evidence and look at what could be proven.
He will most likely serve a life sentence.
But my point is that a judicial system can't sentence people based on emotions and gut feelings.
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Ghailani faces a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a possible life sentence. He will remain in custody and sentencing will take place on Jan. 25, 2011.
First Terrorist tried in civilian court in NYC cleared of charges. WE TOLD YOU! i little misleading
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So he played a direct hand in killing 224 people and people are actually happy that he was found guilty of one charge of conspiracy that may put him in jail for a minimum of 20 years?
Morons. ::)
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The Ghailani verdict and American justice
By Glenn Greenwald A federal jury in New York yesterday returned a guilty verdict against accused Terrorist Ahmed Ghailani on one count of conspiracy to blow up a government building, a crime which entails a sentence of 20 years to life, but acquitted him on more than 280 charges of murder and conspiracy relating to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Last month, the federal judge presiding over the case, Lewis Kaplan, banned the testimony of a key witness because the Government under George Bush and Dick Cheney learned of his identity not through legal means but instead by torturing Ghailani (and also possibly coerced the testimony of that witness). The verdict will provoke predictable, fact-free, fear-mongering attacks on the American judicial system and on President Obama for using it in this case -- renowned legal scholar Liz Cheney and heralded warrior Bill Kristol wasted no time spewing these trite accusations -- but this outcome actually proves the opposite.
Initially, it should be noted that the verdict in this case -- no matter what it was -- would be largely inconsequential in terms of Ghailani's imprisonment. He has already been imprisoned without charges for six years, including two years at a CIA "black site," and yesterday's verdict means he will spend decades more in prison.
But even had he been acquitted on all counts, the Obama administration had made clear that it would simply continue to imprison him anyway under what it claims is the President's "post-acquittal detention power" -- i.e., when an accused Terrorist is wholly acquitted in court, he can still be imprisoned indefinitely by the U.S. Government under the "law of war" even when the factual bases for the claim that he's an "enemy combatant" (i.e. that he blew up the two embassies) are the same ones underlying the crimes for which he was fully acquitted after a full trial. When he banned the testimony of the key witness, Judge Kaplan, somewhat cravenly, alluded to and implicitly endorsed this extraordinary detention theory as a means of assuring the public he had done nothing to endanger them with his ruling (emphasis added):
[Ghailani's] status as an "enemy combatant" probably would permit his detention as something akin to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end even if he were found not guilty in this case.
Most news accounts are emphasizing that trying Ghailani in a civilian court was intended by the Obama DOJ to be a "showcase" for how effective trials can be in punishing Terrorists. That's a commendable goal, and Holder's decision to try Ghailani in a real court should be defended by anyone who believes in the rule of law and the Constitution. But given these realities, this was more "show trial" than "showcase" since the Government would simply have imprisoned him, likely forever, even if he had been acquitted on all counts.
Then there is the false premise -- found at the center of every attack on the Obama DOJ's conduct here -- that the key witness would not have been excluded had Ghailani had been put before a military commission at Guantanamo. That is simply untrue. The current rules governing those military tribunals bar the use of torture-obtained evidence to roughly the same extent as real courts do. Anyone who doubts that should simply read Rule 304(a)(1) and (5) of the Military Commissions Manual, found on page 205 of the document:
[304(a)(1)] No statement, obtained by the use of torture, or by cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. . . . whether or not under color of law, shall be admissible in a trial by military commission . . . .
[304(a)(5)] Evidence derived from a statement that would be excluded under section (a)(1) of this rule may not be received in evidence against an accused who made the statement if the accused makes a timely motion to suppress or an objection . . . .
The only exceptions to those exclusionary rules are essentially identical to those used in the judicial system, which were applied by Judge Kaplan but found to be inapplicable ("the evidence would have been obtained even if the statement had not been made; or [] use of such evidence would otherwise be consistent with the interests of justice"). As The New York Times' Charlie Savage pointed out this morning, "Judge Kaplan strongly suggested in a footnote that a military commission judge would have excluded that testimony, too, pointing to restrictions against the use of evidence obtained by torture in military trials." Savage went on to note: "still, arguments over the factual details of the case were overshadowed by the political dynamics of the verdict" -- meaning that nobody is going to let the facts get in the way of a nice right-wing, fear-mongering, liberty-attacking orgy. (And all of that's entirely independent of the fact that civilian trials have proven far more effective [if not more just] at punishing accused Terrorists than military commissions have been.).
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LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Says the same people who aren't upset that OBL isn't even wanted for 911.
oh brother!
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LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Says the same people who aren't upset that OBL isn't even wanted for 911.
oh brother!
You were already shut down on this. I'll point it out again, though. It is not possible to fit every crime that OBL is charged with on the FBI wanted poster that you referenced to make this claim.
Comments like this are why you have no credibility on anything regarding 9/11.
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The Ghailani verdict and American justice
By Glenn Greenwald A federal jury in New York yesterday returned a guilty verdict against accused Terrorist Ahmed Ghailani on one count of conspiracy to blow up a government building, a crime which entails a sentence of 20 years to life, but acquitted him on more than 280 charges of murder and conspiracy relating to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Last month, the federal judge presiding over the case, Lewis Kaplan, banned the testimony of a key witness because the Government under George Bush and Dick Cheney learned of his identity not through legal means but instead by torturing Ghailani (and also possibly coerced the testimony of that witness). The verdict will provoke predictable, fact-free, fear-mongering attacks on the American judicial system and on President Obama for using it in this case -- renowned legal scholar Liz Cheney and heralded warrior Bill Kristol wasted no time spewing these trite accusations -- but this outcome actually proves the opposite.
Initially, it should be noted that the verdict in this case -- no matter what it was -- would be largely inconsequential in terms of Ghailani's imprisonment. He has already been imprisoned without charges for six years, including two years at a CIA "black site," and yesterday's verdict means he will spend decades more in prison.
But even had he been acquitted on all counts, the Obama administration had made clear that it would simply continue to imprison him anyway under what it claims is the President's "post-acquittal detention power" -- i.e., when an accused Terrorist is wholly acquitted in court, he can still be imprisoned indefinitely by the U.S. Government under the "law of war" even when the factual bases for the claim that he's an "enemy combatant" (i.e. that he blew up the two embassies) are the same ones underlying the crimes for which he was fully acquitted after a full trial. When he banned the testimony of the key witness, Judge Kaplan, somewhat cravenly, alluded to and implicitly endorsed this extraordinary detention theory as a means of assuring the public he had done nothing to endanger them with his ruling (emphasis added):
[Ghailani's] status as an "enemy combatant" probably would permit his detention as something akin to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end even if he were found not guilty in this case.
Most news accounts are emphasizing that trying Ghailani in a civilian court was intended by the Obama DOJ to be a "showcase" for how effective trials can be in punishing Terrorists. That's a commendable goal, and Holder's decision to try Ghailani in a real court should be defended by anyone who believes in the rule of law and the Constitution. But given these realities, this was more "show trial" than "showcase" since the Government would simply have imprisoned him, likely forever, even if he had been acquitted on all counts.
Then there is the false premise -- found at the center of every attack on the Obama DOJ's conduct here -- that the key witness would not have been excluded had Ghailani had been put before a military commission at Guantanamo. That is simply untrue. The current rules governing those military tribunals bar the use of torture-obtained evidence to roughly the same extent as real courts do. Anyone who doubts that should simply read Rule 304(a)(1) and (5) of the Military Commissions Manual, found on page 205 of the document:
[304(a)(1)] No statement, obtained by the use of torture, or by cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. . . . whether or not under color of law, shall be admissible in a trial by military commission . . . .
[304(a)(5)] Evidence derived from a statement that would be excluded under section (a)(1) of this rule may not be received in evidence against an accused who made the statement if the accused makes a timely motion to suppress or an objection . . . .
The only exceptions to those exclusionary rules are essentially identical to those used in the judicial system, which were applied by Judge Kaplan but found to be inapplicable ("the evidence would have been obtained even if the statement had not been made; or [] use of such evidence would otherwise be consistent with the interests of justice"). As The New York Times' Charlie Savage pointed out this morning, "Judge Kaplan strongly suggested in a footnote that a military commission judge would have excluded that testimony, too, pointing to restrictions against the use of evidence obtained by torture in military trials." Savage went on to note: "still, arguments over the factual details of the case were overshadowed by the political dynamics of the verdict" -- meaning that nobody is going to let the facts get in the way of a nice right-wing, fear-mongering, liberty-attacking orgy. (And all of that's entirely independent of the fact that civilian trials have proven far more effective [if not more just] at punishing accused Terrorists than military commissions have been.).
Utterly clueless nonsense.
It is logically nuts to convict a guy of conspiracy and not the resultant crimes. This is Criminal Law 101. I can't believe how stupid you people are.
This is like cheering on a victory of the govt for getting Al Capone on a single tax charge while losing the case on murder, ambling, prostitution, etcetc.
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A Terrorist Victory
Frontpagemagazine ^ | 11-18-10 | N.M. Hungerford
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A landmark court decision was handed down Wednesday in the case against Ahmed Ghailani, a Guantanmo Bay detainee accused of taking part in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Ghailani, a Tanzanian national, was acquitted of all but one of the 286 charges levied against him, most of which were for the murder of the 224 people killed in the embassy bombings. After a disturbed juror asked to be removed from the deliberation process last week, many feared that the Ghailani trial, the first U.S. detainee trial to be conducted in a civilian court, would yield a hung jury. Few, however, predicted such a propitious verdict for the al-Qeada collaborator, an outcome which carries heavy implication for the Obama administration and its controversial quest to try Guantanamo detainees in the criminal justice system.
The trial took place in lower Manhattan before a jury of six men and six women. In addition to the murder (and attempted murder) charges, Ghailani, who is a former Islamic cleric, was also accused of conspiring with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Ghailani had been held in Guantanamo since September 2006 until being transfered to New York in 2009. The decision to try Ghailani in New York City — a “trial” balloon, if you will — was met with fierce opposition from both hawkish conservatives and heedful liberals alike. The trial proceeded for five weeks and the jury deliberated for five days before rendering its verdict.
Many are already claiming a victory of sorts for the Obama administration, and the Justice Department wasted no time issuing a written statement claiming to be “pleased” that Ghailani “now faces a minimum of 20 years and a potential life sentence for his role in the embassy bombings.” Mason Clutter from the Soros-linked Constitution Project declared, “The system worked here.” Did it? In all likelihood, the now-convicted terrorist will indeed face life in prison. Such glowing pronouncements, however, fundamentally misunderstand the broader — and more disconcerting — issue at stake.
A puzzling aspect of the Ghailani case is the one count for which the defendant was found guilty: taking part in a conspiracy to destroy U.S. property. Prima facia, it is unclear how a jury could find someone guilty of conspiracy, but not, by extension, hold that person accountable for the deaths that resulted from that conspiracy.
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In ordinary jurisprudence, the prosecution must prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, the defense portrayed the defendant as an unwitting collaborator, or, as Ghailani’s attorney Peter Quijano put it:
This innocent, naive boy was used as a dupe by his friends…Call him a pawn, call him a fall guy, but don’t call him guilty.
The upshot is that, according to his defense team, Ghailani knew that he was participating in a concerted effort of some kind, but, hypothetically speaking, this does not necessarily mean that he was aware that what he was participating in was meant to have lethal consequences. At least the jury decided it could not determine intent to kill given the lack of probative evidence and the apparently successful obfuscation of the true nature of the defendant’s state of mind at the time the bombing occurred.
However, this outcome was far from inevitable. Ghailani’s saving grace was that, just before his trial, a key witness was barred from testifying before the court. This witness would have admitted to selling explosives to Ghailani, and the prosecution claimed it was crucial to its case. Unfortunately, because knowledge of this witness was acquired using intense interrogation, his testimony was deemed inadmissible by the judge. The most important aspect of the Ghailani prosecution — which would have held him accountable for his part in the murder of 224 people — was impermissible. Had the Ghailani case been handled by a military tribunal, which doesn’t consider the method by which evidence is obtained, the damning testimony would not have been stricken and Ghailani’s guilt in this case would have been far less questionable. That is, unless a military commission would seriously entertain the idea that Ghailani would buy explosives for use in a conspiracy without intending to killing people. Even if there was doubt, military tribunals do not have to be unanimous and hearsay evidence is admissible. As a result, Ghailani could have been put to death, per the Military Commission Act, or otherwise justly held accountable for massacring hundreds of innocent people, including 12 Americans.
Instead, Ghailani was found “not guilty” of committing a mass murder. On the other hand, the fact that Ghailani will still face life in prison is practically accidental. If Ghailani had been a lone terrorist, and there was no conspiratorial evidence (yet the key witness’s testimony had been excluded on the same grounds), the outcome in the matter would have been far more sinister. Keep in mind that this is only the first case to be tried — and the system did not work.
The debate now turns to what the Obama administration will do henceforth. It has been almost two years since President Obama signed an executive order authorizing the shutdown of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. One hope was that the civilian court system would help handle Guantanamo terrorists and move the U.S. in a more “enlightened” direction. However, the outcry over this policy has been incredibly consistent. Mere hours after the verdict in the Ghailani case was delivered, public contempt only resumed more vigorously. This will surely put a chill on any hope of clearing out Guantanamo cells through the criminal justice system. If the Obama administration concedes that military tribunals are most appropriately dealt with through military tribunals (while implicitly legitimizing the idea that detainees are not criminals, but enemies of war) there will likely be an equally strong push to hold the tribunals in Guantanamo and keep the facility functioning.
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More pertinently, the Ghailani verdict comes in advance of the long-awaited decision in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the lead conspirator of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Attorney General Eric Holder recently tantalized the press by revealing that a decision was imminent regarding where the confessed-terrorist would be tried. The most recent reports, however, have suggested that the administration does not have the appetite to pursue this case further. In wake of the Ghailani verdict, perhaps it will lose the political will to enact this woeful policy for good.
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Great article. You far left communists/marxists/progressives are not going to be elated until one of these scumbags walks free in to Times Square.
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I see. Size of the poster is a limitation for him being the guy behind the biggest crime of the century. Gotcha. Way bigger than USS Cole, but he's wanted for that?
Ummm
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20 to life... I wouldn't exactly call that a 'victory'.
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Utterly clueless nonsense.
It is logically nuts to convict a guy of conspiracy and not the resultant crimes. This is Criminal Law 101. I can't believe how stupid you people are.
This is like cheering on a victory of the govt for getting Al Capone on a single tax charge while losing the case on murder, ambling, prostitution, etcetc.
yea yea ,wait he's a federal judge and your posting on getbig braaaaaaaaaaaa ooookkkk :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
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20 to life... I wouldn't exactly call that a 'victory'.
::) ::) Look at the precedent set by the judge is declaring the evidence inadmissable fool!
What the hell is wrong with you 240? Seriously - lately you have become really warped. Soldiers on the battle field are not doing their jobs with civilian trial evidence rules in mind. Do you want them to mirandize terrorists on the battlefield 240?
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yea yea ,wait he's a federal judge and your posting on getbig braaaaaaaaaaaa ooookkkk :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
Idiot - it was the jury for made the find of guilt and innonence not the judge fool.
The judge disallowed the main evidence that would have gotten the murder conviction.
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Do you want them to mirandize terrorists on the battlefield 240?
No. I want them to cap them. Or ship em to egypt for interrogation, then sink their boat on the way back.
I sure don't want them to sit in limbo for 8 years because the repub president doesn't know how to deal with them - then handed off to a softie lib to get a life sentence.
It's akin to breaking a dish and leaving it on the floor, then yelling at my puppy for cutting himself on the shards of glass. it's on ME for being a dumbass and not handling a mans' business, and letting the softie deal with what I was too lazy/busy to handle.
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I see. Size of the poster is a limitation for him being the guy behind the biggest crime of the century. Gotcha. Way bigger than USS Cole, but he's wanted for that?
Ummm
Haha, you're so fucking dense that it's hilarious. Let me help you out. See how it mentions the 1998 bombings on his wanted attack. Notice how those happened in 1998? 1998 < 2001. Most of the guy's on that list are listed as being wanted for their earliest attacks first, since you know, that's what got them on that list. Everything else will be added on and wouldn't change the fact they're wanted terrorists.
Here's something else that proves you're a moron. The second to last sentence on his wanted profile states:
"Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world."
He's wanted for countless terrorist attacks, dipshit. Not just 9/11 or the USS Cole. ::)
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No. I want them to cap them. Or ship em to egypt for interrogation, then sink their boat on the way back.
I sure don't want them to sit in limbo for 8 years because the repub president doesn't know how to deal with them - then handed off to a softie lib to get a life sentence.
It's akin to breaking a dish and leaving it on the floor, then yelling at my puppy for cutting himself on the shards of glass. it's on ME for being a dumbass and not handling a mans' business, and letting the softie deal with what I was too lazy/busy to handle.
::) ::) ::)
and if they do that - the soldiers get court martialed.
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::) ::) ::)
and if they do that - the soldiers get court martialed.
O RLY? Where was the Pat Tillman court martial?
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O RLY? Where was the Pat Tillman court martial?
::)
Keep it up - you areheading into Blacken and mons territory lately.
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::)
Keep it up - you areheading into Blacken and mons territory lately.
i guess thats better than being a liar
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i guess thats better than being a liar
You've been caught lying and are widely regarded as one of the three biggest morons on the politics board. Hope this helps.
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berzerkfairy how you doing :D :D
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Question:
Will the terrorrist be able to appeal the decision?
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THIS VERDICT WAS COMPLETE BOGUS CRAP. CRIMINAL LAW 101 - ASK GEORGE WHOREWELL, IS THAT IF YOU ARE FOUND GUILTY OF CONSPIRACY, YOU ARE ALSO LIABLE FOR ALL RESULTANT ACTS.
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The crime of conspiracy is traditionally defined as an agreement between two or more persons, entered into for the purpose of committing an unlawful act. At first carefully delimited in scope, conspiracy evolved through a long and tortuous history into a tool employed against dangerous group activity of any sort. The twentieth century in particular has witnessed an expansion of conspiracy law in the face of modern organized crime, complex business arrangements in restraint of trade, and subversive political activity. At the same time, indiscriminate conspiracy prosecutions have sparked great controversy, not only because the vagueness of the concept of agreement and the difficulty in proving it frequently result in convictions with only a tenuous basis for criminal liability, but also because conspiracy law involves a number of extensions of traditional criminal law doctrines. The principal extensions are the following:
1.Conspiracy criminalizes an agreement to commit a crime, even though an attempt conviction would not be permitted because of the highly preparatory nature of the act.
2.Although conspiracy is now generally limited in most jurisdictions to agreements to commit statutorily defined crimes, traditionally persons agreeing to commit tortious acts, or indeed any acts resulting in "prejudice to the general welfare," could be held liable for conspiracy.
3.All conspirators are liable for crimes committed in furtherance of the conspiracy by any member of the group, regardless of whether liability would be established by the law of complicity.
4.Contrary to the usual rule that an attempt to commit a crime merges with the completed offense, conspirators may be tried and punished for both the conspiracy and the completed crime.
5.Special procedural rules designed to facilitate conspiracy prosecutions can prejudice the rights of defendants. For example, all conspirators may be joined for trial, with resultant danger of confusion of issues and of guilt by association; and rules of evidence are loosened to alleviate the difficulties of proving the existence of a clandestine agreement.
In order better to understand and evaluate these doctrines, it is necessary to examine the elements of the crime of conspiracy. Like most crimes, conspiracy requires an act (actus reus) and an accompanying mental state (mens rea). The agreement constitutes the act, and the intention to achieve the unlawful objective of that agreement constitutes the required mental state.
Read more: Conspiracy - Introduction - Crime, Agreement, Law, Commit, Act, and Crimes http://law.jrank.org/pages/716/Conspiracy-Introduction.html#ixzz15e0OWIfd
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On a slightly different topic:
Why haven't anyone been able to catch Osama bin Laden yet?
Don't you guys think that is a little strange?
BTW, let me first say that I don't buy into any conspiracy about him being on US payroll or anything like that.
But I'm just saying that it seems like he vanished.
Which would perhaps be possible if he would retire completely.
But it seems like he's still in charge, at least from what the reports about Al-Qaida says.
And how is that possible, that he couldn't be traced?
Karadzic completely retired and hid. But was still traced.
(http://www.amnation.com/vfr/Karadzic.jpg)
Just something I thought of the other day.
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333 don't bother explaining the law to these morons. If it doesn't involve Sarah Palin's menstrual cycle, it's beyond their comprehension. The law is quite simple. I'll break it down for the Jerry's kids of this board==>Conspiracy to commit murder; if the murder is committed all co-conspirators are guilty of murder and or any underlying criminal acts that stem from the conspiracy no matter what their role in the conspiracy was-- period. Even if nobody dies, you are guilty of attempted murder for being involved in the conspiracy if steps were taken in furtherance of committing the crime. To be found guilty, you don't even have to know who all the participants in the conspiracy are, and it is irrelevant how minimal your role was in the conspiracy. In this case the verdict makes no sense because if you conspire to destroy U.S. property, and there are people on the property that die at the time it is destroyed, then you are guilty of murder/ terrorism and about 100 other crimes that warrant life in prison or death sentence. Plain and simple. That is it.
This is a disaster, a miscarriage of justice and a huge blow to this administration. Being smug and incompetent is a dangerous combination.
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On a slightly different topic:
Why haven't anyone been able to catch Osama bin Laden yet?
Don't you guys think that is a little strange?
BTW, let me first say that I don't buy into any conspiracy about him being on US payroll or anything like that.
But I'm just saying that it seems like he vanished.
Which would perhaps be possible if he would retire completely.
But it seems like he's still in charge, at least from what the reports about Al-Qaida says.
And how is that possible, that he couldn't be traced?
Karadzic completely retired and hid. But was still traced.
(http://www.amnation.com/vfr/Karadzic.jpg)
Just something I thought of the other day.
I don't think it's that strange. I'm 100% convinced that the terrorist state of Pakistan's ISI is hiding him and, believe it or not, the ISI is pretty effective at what they do. Hell, they're the entire reason we're still in Afghanistan.
Best keep sending them billions of dollars, though.
And it took them years to find Karadzic. And he was in a small country like that. It's a lot different going into a no-go zone like Pakistan (especially their tribal regions) and trying to track these guys down.
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333 don't bother explaining the law to these morons. If it doesn't involve Sarah Palin's menstrual cycle, it's beyond their comprehension. The law is quite simple. I'll break it down for the Jerry's kids of this board==>Conspiracy to commit murder; if the murder is committed all co-conspirators are guilty of murder and or any underlying criminal acts that stem from the conspiracy no matter what their role in the conspiracy was-- period. Even if nobody dies, you are guilty of attempted murder for being involved in the conspiracy if steps were taken in furtherance of committing the crime. To be found guilty, you don't even have to know who all the participants in the conspiracy are, and it is irrelevant how minimal your role was in the conspiracy. In this case the verdict makes no sense because if you conspire to destroy U.S. property, and there are people on the property that die at the time it is destroyed, then you are guilty of murder/ terrorism and about 100 other crimes that warrant life in prison or death sentence. Plain and simple. That is it.
This is a disaster, a miscarriage of justice and a huge blow to this administration. Being smug and incompetent is a dangerous combination.
Like GW said - 240 / blacken, mons, hedge -
LEAVE THE LEGAL ISSUES TO THOSE OF US WHO KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT IT.
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I don't think it's that strange. I'm 100% convinced that the terrorist state of Pakistan's ISI is hiding him and, believe it or not, the ISI is pretty effective at what they do. Hell, they're the entire reason we're still in Afghanistan.
Best keep sending them billions of dollars, though.
And it took them years to find Karadzic. And he was in a small country like that. It's a lot different going into a no-go zone like Pakistan (especially their tribal regions) and trying to track these guys down.
I had to read up on ISI. Have to admit I didn't know much about it.
Interesting.
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333 don't bother explaining the law to these morons. If it doesn't involve Sarah Palin's menstrual cycle, it's beyond their comprehension. The law is quite simple. I'll break it down for the Jerry's kids of this board==>Conspiracy to commit murder; if the murder is committed all co-conspirators are guilty of murder and or any underlying criminal acts that stem from the conspiracy no matter what their role in the conspiracy was-- period. Even if nobody dies, you are guilty of attempted murder for being involved in the conspiracy if steps were taken in furtherance of committing the crime. To be found guilty, you don't even have to know who all the participants in the conspiracy are, and it is irrelevant how minimal your role was in the conspiracy. In this case the verdict makes no sense because if you conspire to destroy U.S. property, and there are people on the property that die at the time it is destroyed, then you are guilty of murder/ terrorism and about 100 other crimes that warrant life in prison or death sentence. Plain and simple. That is it.
This is a disaster, a miscarriage of justice and a huge blow to this administration. Being smug and incompetent is a dangerous combination.
Great post.
Actually a VERY good explanation.
Thanks.
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I had to read up on ISI. Have to admit I didn't know much about it.
Interesting.
It's widely believe that they have up to 7 operatives sitting on the Taliban's Quetta council and that they've been orchestrating the insurgency against the US for years now, which begs the question, "why do we consider Pakistan an ally again?"
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It's widely believe that they have up to 7 operatives sitting on the Taliban's Quetta council and that they've been orchestrating the insurgency against the US for years now, which begs the question, "why do we consider Pakistan an ally again?"
Seems like it's much like Turkey - a government within the government.
So perhaps the civil government really is - sort of, kind of - an ally.
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Krauthhammer - this is a major blow to obama
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/11/18/krauthammer_ghailani_verdict_huge_embarrassment_for_obama_admin.html
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Seems like it's much like Turkey - a government within the government.
So perhaps the civil government really is - sort of, kind of - an ally.
I suppose that argument can be made. I'd be more inclined to believe that there are people in the Pakistani government that know full well what the ISI is doing. Maybe not the President, but I wouldn't have any trouble believing there are higher-ups who know.
For what it's worth, Pakistan has more troops stationed on the border with India than they do in the northwest tribal regions. Yet who is more likely to topple the Pakistani government anytime soon? That's right, the psychopaths coming out of the tribal regions.
Regardless, I don't doubt for a second that the ISI doesn't know full well where a lot of the Taliban/Al Qaeda high command are. Those guys are too big to be able to move throughout that country without them knowing.
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DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!! He was cleared of charges thats fucked up. So he got off and is free now? Where is he partying at?
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DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!! He was cleared of charges thats fucked up. So he got off and is free now? Where is he partying at?
That's a pretty foolish statement, Mal.
This guy played a direct hand in the murder of 224 people and got off on every charge but one, and a conspiracy charge nonetheless. Talk about pathetic.
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DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!! He was cleared of charges thats fucked up. So he got off and is free now? Where is he partying at?
::) ::)
Read GW's post above and get a clue. Law aint your thing bro.
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::) ::)
Read GW's post above and get a clue. Law aint your thing bro.
i didnt read the thread.. i read the title and it said he got off...why am i getting the rolley eyes.. im goin off your title. It said he was clear of charges..Did they deport him? Where is he? Answer my questions
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i didnt read the thread.. i read the title and it said he got off...why am i getting the rolley eyes.. im goin off your title. It said he was clear of charges..Did they deport him? Where is he? Answer my questions
bump for answers.. he got cleared of charges right...where is he now? did they deport him?
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bump for answers.. he got cleared of charges right...where is he now? did they deport him?
He got convicted of the least charge and is awaiting sentencing. However, almost every single serious charge was bounced and he was cleared when the evidence showed he was knee deep in the deaths of over 200 people.
This is a complete farce and perfect example of what we said was going to happen.
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He got convicted of the least charge and is awaiting sentencing. However, almost every single serious charge was bounced and he was cleared when the evidence showed he was knee deep in the deaths of over 200 people.
This is a complete farce and perfect example of what we said was going to happen.
What was the least charge. And in NY what is the average sentence for that charge?
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How is this bad? He was convicted and will be sentenced. He will spend 20+ years in solitary or at a supermax for "his own protection".
This is a win for justice and freedom. If there isn't enough evidence and/or they can not convict him of a crime then that is the way the law is suppose to work. Indefinite detention is the stupidest idea America ever had. It once again shows arrogance and basically tells the world "you are not equal to us so you don't get our rights". So much for being the beacon of the world for freedom when that's the attitude.
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What was the least charge. And in NY what is the average sentence for that charge?
He was convicted o conspiracy, but not the over 200 deaths that resulted from said conspiracy, which legally is a complete facr ala OJ Simpson jury.
Sentencing can be from 20 years to life, 20 years means probably 15-17.
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How is this bad? He was convicted and will be sentenced. He will spend 20+ years in solitary or at a supermax for "his own protection".
This is a win for justice and freedom. If there isn't enough evidence and/or they can not convict him of a crime then that is the way the law is suppose to work. Indefinite detention is the stupidest idea America ever had. It once again shows arrogance and basically tells the world "you are not equal to us so you don't get our rights". So much for being the beacon of the world for freedom when that's the attitude.
::) ::)
This piece of shit killed over 200 people and the most inciriminiating evidence was tossed due to the method of how said evidence was obtained. Soldiers are not cops and dont adhere to criminal procedures thinking these killers are goin to be on trial.
But I guess reality does not really matter.
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What do you guys not get? He was convicted of conspiracy, so therefore BY LAW, he is connected to whatever crime he was "conspiring" on....so therefore he was convicted of conspriracy in the deaths of 200+ people, yet won't be sentenced based on that.
Get it?
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::) ::)
This piece of shit killed over 200 people and the most inciriminiating evidence was tossed due to the method of how said evidence was obtained. Soldiers are not cops and dont adhere to criminal procedures thinking these killers are goin to be on trial.
But I guess reality does not really matter.
And yet he was still convicted and will be sentenced. This is a wake up call that our soldiers will need to abide by the laws of this country overseas and will need to understand the rights of a prisoner.
Overall i see it as a big win for America and for freedom.
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He was convicted o conspiracy, but not the over 200 deaths that resulted from said conspiracy, which legally is a complete facr ala OJ Simpson jury.
Sentencing can be from 20 years to life, 20 years means probably 15-17.
So he is getting atleat 15 years right
Dude. maybe you want to change this misleading ass title "Guy cleared of charges" but in the thread you say "well he was charged and he will do 15 years atleast" come on bro there is no need for this type of fuckery. you dont need to go all fox news, pick and choose, leave shot out, in your thread title. You are looking for effect but to smart people you look like an asshole.. cmon, youre better than that
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15 years for playing a direct role in the murder of TWO HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR PEOPLE. Let's celebrate that! Fuck yeah!
Can't wait to hear the talk when KSM ends up getting a slap on the wrist.
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And yet he was still convicted and will be sentenced. This is a wake up call that our soldiers will need to abide by the laws of this country overseas and will need to understand the rights of a prisoner.
Overall i see it as a big win for America and for freedom.
WTF? Soldiers aren't cops........should have just double-tapped this sack of shit and been done with it. that is the ONLY thing they understand.
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15 years for playing a direct role in the murder of TWO HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR PEOPLE. Let's celebrate that! Fuck yeah! ::)
Can't wait to hear the talk when KSM ends up getting a slap on the wrist.
If you had to put your life on a bet, do you bet he will get 15 years?
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If you had to put your life on a bet, do you bet he will get 15 years?
With any luck the pile of shit will take a shiv to the kidney on his very first day..... ;D
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If you had to put your life on a bet, do you bet he will get 15 years?
It doesn't matter. This guy was up to his neck in the mass murder of hundreds of people and ended up getting arguably the best outcome of it.
It's funny that's it now an accomplishment that a mass murder ends up guilty on one charge.
You really think the Obama admin is happy with that? I would bet they're not. Do you think this bodes well for the argument of trying KSM in a civilian court? I would bet it doesn't.
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With any luck the pile of shit will take a shiv to the kidney on his very first day..... ;D
oh he chose option d by default.. its on like donkey kong...
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It doesn't matter. This guy was up to his neck in the mass murder of hundreds of people and ended up getting arguably the best outcome of it.
It's funny that's it now an accomplishment that a mass murder ends up guilty on one charge.
You really think the Obama admin is happy with that? I would bet they're not. Do you think this bodes well for the argument of trying KSM in a civilian court? I would bet it doesn't.
But what do you think? if you had to bet....would you say 15 years?
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But what do you think? if you had to bet....would you say 15 years?
Why would I bet on it? It's a colossal failure of epic proportions. This guy should have 224 life sentences hung around his neck and instead we're arguing how many years he'll get for the single conspiracy charge he was found guilty of.
Awesome.
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Why would I bet on it? It's a colossal failure of epic proportions. This guy should have 224 life sentences hung around his neck and instead we're arguing how many years he'll get for the single conspiracy charge he was found guilty of.
Awesome.
i would venture to say he will never see the light of day
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WTF? Soldiers aren't cops........should have just double-tapped this sack of shit and been done with it. that is the ONLY thing they understand.
They aren't right now, but this precedent could mean they will either have to kill said terrorist or detain in a way that any evidence that can be used will be legally usable.
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i would venture to say he will never see the light of day
The possibility of him being able to see the light of day now because of the massive failure that was this trial is reason enough to declare it a disaster.
And this isn't exactly good news for the people who want to have KSM's trial in NYC.
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They aren't right now, but this precedent could mean they will either have to kill said terrorist or detain in a way that any evidence that can be used will be legally usable.
I vote option 1..... ;D Seriously, we are putting our soldiers in a very awkward position with this as a precedent.
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So he is getting atleat 15 years right
Dude. maybe you want to change this misleading ass title "Guy cleared of charges" but in the thread you say "well he was charged and he will do 15 years atleast" come on bro there is no need for this type of fuckery. you dont need to go all fox news, pick and choose, leave shot out, in your thread title. You are looking for effect but to smart people you look like an asshole.. cmon, youre better than that
Mal - lets say some shitbag murders your whole family. Are you going to jump for joy when the jury clears him of the murder charge but convicts him only on weapons possession?
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I vote option 1..... ;D Seriously, we are putting our soldiers in a very awkward position with this as a precedent.
I agree to a degree, but that's going to be what it takes if we want to detain and interrogate these individuals.
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I agree to a degree, but that's going to be what it takes if we want to detain and interrogate these individuals.
Oh yeah, sounds great - what happens when you are in a fire fight and you catch the killer and he says on the battlefield "I want a lawyer? "
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Mal - lets say some shitbag murders your whole family. Are you going to jump for joy when the jury clears him of the murder charge but convicts him only on weapons possession?
Im not saying i like the situation at all. But your thread title makes it seem like he is at a bar jumpin for joy because "he got off"...do you understand what im saying
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I vote option 1..... ;D Seriously, we are putting our soldiers in a very awkward position with this as a precedent.
agree 2 to the back of the head and piss on the body
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Oh yeah, sounds great - what happens when you are in a fire fight and you catch the killer and he says on the battlefield "I want a lawyer? "
The same thing Americans did to captured German and Japanese soldiers in WW2 either detain him or shoot him.
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Im not saying i like the situation at all. But your thread title makes it seem like he is at a bar jumpin for joy because "he got off"...do you understand what im saying
In legal circles - this is a GGGRREEEAAATTT Victory for the terrorists. Are you freaking kidding?
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The same thing Americans did to captured German and Japanese soldiers in WW2 either detain him or shoot him.
Again - if you detain him under those circumstances you risk anything he says being tossed as a result of coercion.
If you kill him, you risk court martia and not getting the info.
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Again - if you detain him under those circumstances you risk anything he says being tossed as a result of coercion.
If you kill him, you risk court martia and not getting the info.
this.....thats why I said it puts soldiers in a very awkward position.
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In legal circles - this is a GGGRREEEAAATTT Victory for the terrorists. Are you freaking kidding?
We just from 2 different worlds. Im from a science background so im very accurate and literal, you ...well you take certian liberties i would never take because its just not my style and thats cool too
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We just from 2 different worlds. Im from a science background so im very accurate and literal, you ...well you take certian liberties i would never take because its just not my style and thats cool too
Yeah - worst marriage is alwys an engineer and a lawyer - but legally speaking for this guy to literally get cleared of these murder charges is a massive blow.
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Again - if you detain him under those circumstances you risk anything he says being tossed as a result of coercion.
If you kill him, you risk court martia and not getting the info.
You are assuming he will tell you something usable during a firefight? Wow talk about going out on a limb there. Why would you be questioning him during a firefight?
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"How is this bad? He was convicted and will be sentenced. He will spend 20+ years in solitary or at a supermax for "his own protection"."
^ this
Although it pains me to do so... I gotta side with kcballer here.
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Yeah - worst marriage is alwys an engineer and a lawyer - but legally speaking for this guy to literally get cleared of these murder charges is a massive blow.
dude im not marrying you...dont be a homo.. would you like to take a little quiz ;D
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"How is this bad? He was convicted and will be sentenced. He will spend 20+ years in solitary or at a supermax for "his own protection"."
^ this
Although it pains me to do so... I gotta side with kcballer here.
he should be hung...
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"How is this bad? He was convicted and will be sentenced. He will spend 20+ years in solitary or at a supermax for "his own protection"."
^ this
Although it pains me to do so... I gotta side with kcballer here.
The murder charges of 280 people was tossed out as a result of the jury not being able to hear the info that clearly pegged this guy as the culprit due to the fact that the court felt the info was the result of coercion. When they obtained the guy, they did not do so under the idea that a civilian tral would result down the line.
This will now set a precedent for all future trials for evidence purposes. Watch now - KSM will get a military tribunal after this fiasco.
This is like celebrating a weapons charge sticking to a guy who murdered your family and the murder charges dropped
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THE GUY IS DOING A MINIMUM 20 YEARS TO LIFE
Who cares what the charges ended up being.... he's fucked no matter what!
We are arguing about what they choose to put on his 'permanent record"??
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THE GUY IS DOING A MINIMUM 20 YEARS TO LIFE
Who cares what the charges ended up being.... he's fucked no matter what!
We are arguing about what they choose to put on his 'permanent record"??
280 lives = 20 yrs in your book? Fuck that, he should be shot and tossed in a dumpster.
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280 lives = 20 yrs in your book? Fuck that, he should be shot and tossed in a dumpster.
Agreed, but everyone is acting like he literally got away with murder.
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THE GUY IS DOING A MINIMUM 20 YEARS TO LIFE
Who cares what the charges ended up being.... he's fucked no matter what!
We are arguing about what they choose to put on his 'permanent record"??
Its not about this guy, its about the legal precedent that is set. Think about this - what if they only filed murder charges and not the conspiracy charge? The consiracy charge is a joke considering this guy killed 280 people. Additionally, the conviction is a complete farce as law 101 says that a person is guilty of all resultant crimes from the conspiracy. To not find this guy guilty of murder is unreal and shows just how stupid it i to try these killers in civilian courts when they were captured on the battlefield or in the course of war.
Guess what - this guy walks, despite the fact that he confessed.
In legal circles - this case is concered a disaster for Obama, and everyone knows it.
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THE GUY IS DOING A MINIMUM 20 YEARS TO LIFE
Who cares what the charges ended up being.... he's fucked no matter what!
We are arguing about what they choose to put on his 'permanent record"??
20 years equals 17 years in reality.
Mal - this is aboutt he urder charges being tossed.
Again - if a guy murders your family - are you going to be thrilled when the guy gets only a weapons charge that sticks?
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Agreed, but everyone is acting like he literally got away with murder.
I dont see how you can take the whole "cleared of charges." statement would make you think that ::) ;D
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THE GUY IS DOING A MINIMUM 20 YEARS TO LIFE
Who cares what the charges ended up being.... he's fucked no matter what!
We are arguing about what they choose to put on his 'permanent record"??
The possibility of only serving 20 years for killing 224 people is getting away with murder in my book.
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Its not about this guy, its about the legal precedent that is set. Think about this - what if they only filed murder charges and not the conspiracy charge? The consiracy charge is a joke considering this guy killed 280 people. Additionally, the conviction is a complete farce as law 101 says that a person is guilty of all resultant crimes from the conspiracy. To not find this guy guilty of murder is unreal and shows just how stupid it i to try these killers in civilian courts when they were captured on the battlefield or in the course of war.
Guess what - this guy walks, despite the fact that he confessed.
In legal circles - this case is concered a disaster for Obama, and everyone knows it.
What exactly do you want? If he killed your ass in the street, The best that would happen is....
wait for it....
20 years to life.
If he killed 6,000 people, the best you would get is 20 or 25 to life.
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The lesson of Ghailani's trial fiascoAl-Qaida declared war on the US in 1998, so let's not be moral idiots: try their combatants in Guantánamo, not civilian courts
Pamela Geller guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 November 2010 04.18 GMT Article history
________________________ ________________________ ________________
A woman is carried from the rubble of the US embassy in Nairobi in August 1998 after it was bombed by al-Qaida. At his trial in New York, 17 November 2010, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was found guilty on a single charge of conspiracy for his role in the attack. Photograph: Khalil Senosi/AP
On Wednesday, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first Guantánamo detainee to be tried in civilian court in New York, was acquitted of all but one charge, that of conspiracy for his role in jihadist terror bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, which killed 224 people. His acquittal is the first poisonous fruit of Obama's policy of treating acts of war as law enforcement issues. It also shows what is wrong with doing so.
Apparently, the evidence charging him with 224 counts of murder could not be used in court, because "coercive" techniques were used to get information from him. The jury did find him guilty of "conspiracy to destroy government buildings". So, the al-Qaida terrorist killed 224 people and he's guilty of… destruction of public property?
This is a serious setback for the US – another breathtaking failure on the part of the Obama administraton, yet again putting Americans and national security at risk.
Yet, former prosecutor and executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth has argued that such trials, including the trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, should be in New York, since "the victims' families have a right to witness these trials." Yet, on 11 September 2001, all of America was under attack, not just the 9/11 families – it was an act of war against the United States of America.
Roth claims that "by choosing a federal court over the discredited military commissions, the US would show that it values the rule of law, trying even those accused of the worst crimes in a system that is broadly recognised as fair." In reality, by choosing a federal court, we are once again refusing to address the root cause. By pretending that these attacks were not intended to take down America, and work toward overthrowing the government and installing a Sharia-based Islamic government, we yet again surrender to Islamic supremacism and imperialism.
There have been close to 20,000 documented Islamist-inspired attacks worldwide since 9/11; all were inspired by the same Islamic jihadi ideology and given the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric. This is war. It takes incomprehensible delusion and a denial of objective reality to think that combatants in that war are comparable to civilian criminals and should be tried in the same way.
Yet, Roth contends that civilian trials are necessary because "any verdict by the military commissions will inevitably be tainted by the stigma of Guantánamo, where they are held." Barack Obama also claimed, in May 2009, that there was "no question that Guantánamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world."
I disagree. If America prosecutes those who kept this country safe from people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as Obama seems prepared to do, that would set back our moral authority. If America turns her back on the jihad against women, Christians, Jews and non-believers, that would set back America's moral authority.
What's wrong with Guantánamo? Allegations of torture there have been politically motivated, spurious, and pale in comparison to Saddam Hussein at his most lenient. The idea that it is a bad thing that Gitmo is holding jihadists who would slaughter thousands if given the opportunity is evidence of dhimmitude and surrender to the enemy narrative, and to the disinformation that the enemy has been producing.
Moreover, detaining enemy combatants without trial is entirely consistent with the "rule of law" that applies in wartime. Indeed, the Obama Justice Department has found itself making just this argument, albeit without fanfare. In short, indefinite detention at Gitmo "destroyed our credibility" only with Bush-deranged leftists – isn't it amazing how uninterested in our credibility they've suddenly become now that their guy is accountable?
Some of Roth's attempts to justify New York civilian trials for jihadis are bizarre; others simply wrong. "Some opponents of holding the trials in New York," says Roth, "cite purported security concerns, but these fears are overblown." Really? Only if you consider human life worthless, as our enemy does. Roth also says that "the war framework is wrong for such awful crimes since it allows the suspects to glorify themselves as combatants."
Actually, a civilian trial is much more likely than a military tribunal to turn into a dog-and-pony show. In a civilian court in New York, the mass-murdering jihadis would not be on trial; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the military would be the real defendants. Such trials will become veritable jihadi circuses, in which jihadists can propagandise to the whole world in courtrooms choked with reporters.
It would also be much easier for them to game the system. Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted the jihadists who bombed the World Trade Centre in 1993, recalled that one of them told another: "Tell them, 'I don't know. I'm not talking to you. Bring my lawyer.' Never talk to them. Not a word. 'My lawyer' – that's it! That's what's so beautiful about America."
Even worse, as defendants in civilian trials, the 9/11 masterminds would be granted access to material from American intelligence services about jihadi activity in the United States. They would be granted a look at everything the US knows about al-Qaida and its allied groups, and would be able to pass this information on to active jihadists.
McCarthy explains that "the criminal-justice system is tailored to address ordinary crimes committed in peacetime America. It is designed to favor the defendants," and is wholly unequipped to deal with jihadis who "operate from overseas redoubts where American law does not apply, where foreign regimes like Iran and the Taliban are only too happy to abet them."
How much intelligence would be compromised when these jihadists enemies of America are all lawyered up?
They should be tried as the war criminals that they are, at Guantánamo – in a military court.
________________________ ________________________ _______
The leftists applauding this fiasco once again are the useful idiots for the terrorists.
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I dont see how you can take the whole "cleared of charges." statement would make you think that ::) ;D
He did get cleared of murder. Over 200 counts of it.
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What exactly do you want? If he killed your ass in the street, The best that would happen is....
wait for it....
20 years to life.
If he killed 6,000 people, the best you would get is 20 or 25 to life.
no no no no no, this is about legal procedures. This judge and court set the precedent that all info obtained by what it deems "coercive" means will be tossed.
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Ghailani faces a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a possible life sentence. He will remain in custody and sentencing will take place on Jan. 25, 2011.
First Terrorist tried in civilian court in NYC cleared of charges. WE TOLD YOU! i little misleading
PLEASE!!! 280+ charges and he's cleared of all but ONE. And, with more legal chicanery from some left-winged goofball lawyer, he'll serve a quarter to half of that.
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Skip to comments.
Holder Should Resign Or Be Fired, and Obama Should Apologize
Townhall.com ^ | November 18, 2010 | Hugh Hewitt
________________________ ________________________ ________________________ _______
Outrage is growing at the intersection of ideology and incompetence that is the jury's collapse in the trial of Ahmed Ghailani, declared acquitted in the murders of 224 innocents, including a dozen Americans.
The outrage is growing as Americans learn more and more about how utterly avoidable this outrageous miscarriage of justice was. John Podhoretz's and Jennifer Rubin's criticisms are among the most pointed and both employ the damning word "debacle" in the title, and Powerline's Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker weigh in with "The Failure Option." Eric Holder who repeatedly declared his confidence in this process should resign and the president should apologize to the nation and especially to the families of the victims whose killed now has been declared not guilty
An email from an individual very experienced in federal criminal proceedings comments:
This smells like a compromise verdict to me. On Monday you had the report that a juror asked to be excused, claiming she was the lone holdout and she feared continuing verbal assaults on her by the other jurors for refusing to agree with them.
I suspect the 11 jurors wanted to convict on all counts, and this one juror refused.
In order to reach a verdict, the 11 jurors agreed to join her in acquitting him on all counts but one, in exchange for her agreeing to convict him on the one count -- which sounds the least serious based on its description in the indictment.
But, the potential sentence for that count is a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of life. Its up to the district judge to determine how much time he will give him, and the judge can consider all the evidence at trial, including the evidence on the acquitted counts.
To take those counts into consideration in determining what sentence to impose, the judge is only required to find by a preponderance of evidence that the defendant was involved in the criminal conduct for which he was acquitted. He's not being punished for the acquitted conduct, rather, that conduct is to inform the judge about the nature of the defendant's character.
I expect the judge will give him life when all is said and done.
I would like to say "of course the judge will give him life," but who knows? The terrorist should be executed --should have been executed long ago. He murdered hundreds, including a dozen Americans, and his compatriots are cheering this carnival of the incompetent.
America cannot protect its citizens abroad nor avenge them even when their killers are captured. First a bare majority of the Supreme Court repeatedly overrode first the decisions of the Executive and then of the Executive and Congress acting jointly, and then hard left ideology invaded the Department of Justice and was empowered by President Obama and Attorney General Holder. The consequences are on display.
People should reread Justice Scalia's dissent in Boumediene, the Supreme Court's decision rejecting the other branches' joint judgment on the subject of the application of habeas corpus to the terrorists. Justice Scalia zeroed in on the arrogance of the Supreme Court in attempting to dictate how these unlawful combatants ought to be dealt with:
But even when the military has evidence that it can bring forward, it is often foolhardy to release that evidence to the attorneys representing our enemies. And one escalation of procedures that the Court is clear about is affording the detainees increased access to witnesses (perhaps troops serving in Afghanistan?) and to classified information. See ante, at 54–55. During the 1995 prosecution of Omar Abdel Rahman, federal prosecutors gave the names of 200 unindicted co-conspirators to the “Blind Sheik’s” defense lawyers; that information was in the hands of Osama Bin Laden within two weeks. See Minority Report 14–15. In another case, trial testimony revealed to the enemy that the United States had been monitoring their cellular network, whereupon they promptly stopped using it, enabling more of them to evade capture and continue their atrocities. See id., at 15.
And today it is not just the military that the Court elbows aside. A mere two Terms ago in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557 (2006) , when the Court held (quite amazingly) that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 had not stripped habeas jurisdiction over Guantanamo petitioners’ claims, four Members of today’s five-Justice majority joined an opinion saying the following:
“Nothing prevents the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority [for trial by military commission] he believes necessary.
“Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation’s ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation’s ability to determine—through democratic means—how best to do so. The Constitution places its faith in those democratic means.” Id., at 636 (Breyer, J., concurring).1
Turns out they were just kidding. For in response, Congress, at the President’s request, quickly enacted the Military Commissions Act, emphatically reasserting that it did not want these prisoners filing habeas petitions. It is therefore clear that Congress and the Executive—both political branches—have determined that limiting the role of civilian courts in adjudicating whether prisoners captured abroad are properly detained is important to success in the war that some 190,000 of our men and women are now fighting. As the Solicitor General argued, “the Military Commissions Act and the Detainee Treatment Act … represent an effort by the political branches to strike an appropriate balance between the need to preserve liberty and the need to accommodate the weighty and sensitive governmental interests in ensuring that those who have in fact fought with the enemy during a war do not return to battle against the United States.” Brief for Respondents 10–11 (internal quotation marks omitted).
But it does not matter. The Court today decrees that no good reason to accept the judgment of the other two branches is “apparent.” Ante, at 40. “The Government,” it declares, “presents no credible arguments that the military mission at Guantanamo would be compromised if habeas corpus courts had jurisdiction to hear the detainees’ claims.” Id., at 39. What competence does the Court have to second-guess the judgment of Congress and the President on such a point? None whatever. But the Court blunders in nonetheless. Henceforth, as today’s opinion makes unnervingly clear, how to handle enemy prisoners in this war will ultimately lie with the branch that knows least about the national security concerns that the subject entails.
The Supreme Court did not overturn the two branches' decision to authorize military tribunals in Boumediene. The five justice majority just made it more difficult to ever execute the terrorist convicted by the tribunals.
But the long proceedings and attendant confusion foisted on the country by the five justicies in this case and those that preceded it allowed the rise of this insane Obama-Holder approach the fruits of which are now on display in New York City.
Hopefully all but the most ideologically blinded of the cheerleaders of this manifestly unworkable and unnecessary process will now recognize their own folly and all future proceedings for unlawful combatants who are not American citizens will take place in military tribunals conducted at Gitmo. Hopefully at least one more Supreme Court Justice will blink in sudden recognition of the awful injustice their "reasoning" has produced and appropriately defer to the combined judgments of the Article I and Article II authorities on a matter of national security.
Hopefully at least some on the the academic left will shut up about that which they nothing about --the difficulty of trying unlawful combatants with civilians in the jury box and prosecutors unable to use evidence both because of evidentiary standards that ought not to be applicable to terrorists captured abroad and because of the the fear of compromising the methods and sources of intelligence gathering.
If these are the results of this case, perhaps the families of the victims of the massacre perpetrated by Ahmed Ghailani will receive some comfort that while the killer was acquitted of these murders, the manifest and shocking injustice of that result has curbed at least for a while the insanity of the American legal left, and especially its most prominent and powerful members, Barack Obama and Eric Holder.
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Skip to comments.
Holder Should Resign Or Be Fired, and Obama Should Apologize
Townhall.com ^ | November 18, 2010 | Hugh Hewitt
________________________ ________________________ ________________________ _______
Outrage is growing at the intersection of ideology and incompetence that is the jury's collapse in the trial of Ahmed Ghailani, declared acquitted in the murders of 224 innocents, including a dozen Americans.
The outrage is growing as Americans learn more and more about how utterly avoidable this outrageous miscarriage of justice was. John Podhoretz's and Jennifer Rubin's criticisms are among the most pointed and both employ the damning word "debacle" in the title, and Powerline's Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker weigh in with "The Failure Option." Eric Holder who repeatedly declared his confidence in this process should resign and the president should apologize to the nation and especially to the families of the victims whose killed now has been declared not guilty
An email from an individual very experienced in federal criminal proceedings comments:
This smells like a compromise verdict to me. On Monday you had the report that a juror asked to be excused, claiming she was the lone holdout and she feared continuing verbal assaults on her by the other jurors for refusing to agree with them.
I suspect the 11 jurors wanted to convict on all counts, and this one juror refused.
In order to reach a verdict, the 11 jurors agreed to join her in acquitting him on all counts but one, in exchange for her agreeing to convict him on the one count -- which sounds the least serious based on its description in the indictment.
But, the potential sentence for that count is a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of life. Its up to the district judge to determine how much time he will give him, and the judge can consider all the evidence at trial, including the evidence on the acquitted counts.
To take those counts into consideration in determining what sentence to impose, the judge is only required to find by a preponderance of evidence that the defendant was involved in the criminal conduct for which he was acquitted. He's not being punished for the acquitted conduct, rather, that conduct is to inform the judge about the nature of the defendant's character.
I expect the judge will give him life when all is said and done.
I would like to say "of course the judge will give him life," but who knows? The terrorist should be executed --should have been executed long ago. He murdered hundreds, including a dozen Americans, and his compatriots are cheering this carnival of the incompetent.
America cannot protect its citizens abroad nor avenge them even when their killers are captured. First a bare majority of the Supreme Court repeatedly overrode first the decisions of the Executive and then of the Executive and Congress acting jointly, and then hard left ideology invaded the Department of Justice and was empowered by President Obama and Attorney General Holder. The consequences are on display.
People should reread Justice Scalia's dissent in Boumediene, the Supreme Court's decision rejecting the other branches' joint judgment on the subject of the application of habeas corpus to the terrorists. Justice Scalia zeroed in on the arrogance of the Supreme Court in attempting to dictate how these unlawful combatants ought to be dealt with:
But even when the military has evidence that it can bring forward, it is often foolhardy to release that evidence to the attorneys representing our enemies. And one escalation of procedures that the Court is clear about is affording the detainees increased access to witnesses (perhaps troops serving in Afghanistan?) and to classified information. See ante, at 54–55. During the 1995 prosecution of Omar Abdel Rahman, federal prosecutors gave the names of 200 unindicted co-conspirators to the “Blind Sheik’s” defense lawyers; that information was in the hands of Osama Bin Laden within two weeks. See Minority Report 14–15. In another case, trial testimony revealed to the enemy that the United States had been monitoring their cellular network, whereupon they promptly stopped using it, enabling more of them to evade capture and continue their atrocities. See id., at 15.
And today it is not just the military that the Court elbows aside. A mere two Terms ago in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557 (2006) , when the Court held (quite amazingly) that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 had not stripped habeas jurisdiction over Guantanamo petitioners’ claims, four Members of today’s five-Justice majority joined an opinion saying the following:
“Nothing prevents the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority [for trial by military commission] he believes necessary.
“Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation’s ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation’s ability to determine—through democratic means—how best to do so. The Constitution places its faith in those democratic means.” Id., at 636 (Breyer, J., concurring).1
Turns out they were just kidding. For in response, Congress, at the President’s request, quickly enacted the Military Commissions Act, emphatically reasserting that it did not want these prisoners filing habeas petitions. It is therefore clear that Congress and the Executive—both political branches—have determined that limiting the role of civilian courts in adjudicating whether prisoners captured abroad are properly detained is important to success in the war that some 190,000 of our men and women are now fighting. As the Solicitor General argued, “the Military Commissions Act and the Detainee Treatment Act … represent an effort by the political branches to strike an appropriate balance between the need to preserve liberty and the need to accommodate the weighty and sensitive governmental interests in ensuring that those who have in fact fought with the enemy during a war do not return to battle against the United States.” Brief for Respondents 10–11 (internal quotation marks omitted).
But it does not matter. The Court today decrees that no good reason to accept the judgment of the other two branches is “apparent.” Ante, at 40. “The Government,” it declares, “presents no credible arguments that the military mission at Guantanamo would be compromised if habeas corpus courts had jurisdiction to hear the detainees’ claims.” Id., at 39. What competence does the Court have to second-guess the judgment of Congress and the President on such a point? None whatever. But the Court blunders in nonetheless. Henceforth, as today’s opinion makes unnervingly clear, how to handle enemy prisoners in this war will ultimately lie with the branch that knows least about the national security concerns that the subject entails.
The Supreme Court did not overturn the two branches' decision to authorize military tribunals in Boumediene. The five justice majority just made it more difficult to ever execute the terrorist convicted by the tribunals.
But the long proceedings and attendant confusion foisted on the country by the five justicies in this case and those that preceded it allowed the rise of this insane Obama-Holder approach the fruits of which are now on display in New York City.
Hopefully all but the most ideologically blinded of the cheerleaders of this manifestly unworkable and unnecessary process will now recognize their own folly and all future proceedings for unlawful combatants who are not American citizens will take place in military tribunals conducted at Gitmo. Hopefully at least one more Supreme Court Justice will blink in sudden recognition of the awful injustice their "reasoning" has produced and appropriately defer to the combined judgments of the Article I and Article II authorities on a matter of national security.
Hopefully at least some on the the academic left will shut up about that which they nothing about --the difficulty of trying unlawful combatants with civilians in the jury box and prosecutors unable to use evidence both because of evidentiary standards that ought not to be applicable to terrorists captured abroad and because of the the fear of compromising the methods and sources of intelligence gathering.
If these are the results of this case, perhaps the families of the victims of the massacre perpetrated by Ahmed Ghailani will receive some comfort that while the killer was acquitted of these murders, the manifest and shocking injustice of that result has curbed at least for a while the insanity of the American legal left, and especially its most prominent and powerful members, Barack Obama and Eric Holder.
Great read.
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He did get cleared of murder. Over 200 counts of it.
But he was convicted of a charge and will serve time, you dont see how your title is misleading?
Cuz i can say "Terroist convicted of charge and will face 20 to life sentence" and i would be right.
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But he was convicted of a charge and will serve time, you dont see how your title is misleading?
Cuz i can say "Terroist convicted of charge and will face 20 to life sentence" and i would be right.
Yeah - and ignoring the 90000000000 lb gorilla in th room - that being - the charges of murders were cleared.
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Yeah - and ignoring the 90000000000 lb gorilla in th room - that being - the charges of murders were cleared.
Exactly, so why not be a bit more accurate and you can still get your point accross with trying to mislead readers
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Exactly, so why not be a bit more accurate and you can still get your point accross with trying to mislead readers
I'm not misleading shit.
Only a TEAM KNEEPAD cock sucking slave to the obama cult would declare this anything but what it is - FFFAAAIIILLL! ! ! !
Guess what Mal - KSM now is getting a military trial due to this fiasco by Obama and Gitmo is and will never be closed.
Again - law aint your thing bro - stick to dissecting frogs and baby pigs.
This was a disaster legally.
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Press Releases
Senator Webb: Ghailani Verdict Affirms Need for Military Commissions
________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ___
Says such individuals “do not belong in our courts, our prisons or our country”
November 18, 2010
Senator Jim Webb issued the following statement regarding yesterday’s civilian court verdict for Ahmed Ghailani, who actively participated in al-Qaeda attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Saalam, Tanzania, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Ghailani was found guilty on a single conspiracy charge but cleared on 284 other counts.
“Yesterday’s verdict acquitting international terrorist Ahmed Gailani of 284 of the counts against him affirms what I and others have said from the beginning: those charged with crimes of war and those who have been determined to be dangerous law-of-war detainees do not belong in our courts, our prisons or our country.
“I again call on President Obama to use the new military commission system that is in place to try the terrorist detainees currently held at the Guantanamo detention facilities. The new commission system is consistent with international standards. Moreover, it balances robust procedural and substantive rights for the defendants, including prohibiting the introduction of evidence obtained through torture, against the reality that these are not common criminals but violators of the law of war.”
________________________ ________________________ ___________
Democrat Senators even realize what a disaster this is.
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I'm not misleading shit.
Only a TEAM KNEEPAD cock sucking slave to the obama cult would declare this anything but what it is - FFFAAAIIILLL! ! ! !
Guess what Mal - KSM now is getting a military trial due to this fiasco by Obama and Gitmo is and will never be closed.
Again - law aint your thing bro - stick to dissecting frogs and baby pigs.
This was a disaster legally.
So if i put he was found guilty and will be sentenced to possible life i wouldnt be misleading?
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So if i put he was found guilty and will be sentenced to possible life i wouldnt be misleading?
Yes, in the over context of the case.
This is like the DA cheering for joy when Capone got convicted on a tax charge while having the rest of the case tossed.
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But he was convicted of a charge and will serve time, you dont see how your title is misleading?
Cuz i can say "Terroist convicted of charge and will face 20 to life sentence" and i would be right.
ARE YOU SMOKING ROCKS?
This is like a mob boss who commits arson, exhorts people for money, has dozens of people brutally murdered, and gets off SCOTT FREE on those charges.......only to be popped later for tax evasion.
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I don't think it's that strange. I'm 100% convinced that the terrorist state of Pakistan's ISI is hiding him and, believe it or not, the ISI is pretty effective at what they do. Hell, they're the entire reason we're still in Afghanistan.
Best keep sending them billions of dollars, though.
It's amazing.
People see it as a complete CT that we'd ever "let bin laden be free to keep these wars going".
But they openly accept the fact we're sending billions to the group that is protecting him, the same group that paid top terrorist Atta $100k, just 4 days before 911.
I mean.... I don't get it.
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ARE YOU SMOKING ROCKS?
This is like a mob boss who commits arson, exhorts people for money, has dozens of people brutally murdered, and gets off SCOTT FREE on those charges.......only to be popped later for tax evasion.
ha ha ha ha - same time we posted that
obama/Holder = FAIL!
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Baby Girl said it best, two years ago at the GOP convention,
Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights!
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It's amazing.
People see it as a complete CT that we'd ever "let bin laden be free to keep these wars going".
But they openly accept the fact we're sending billions to the group that is protecting him, the same group that paid top terrorist Atta $100k, just 4 days before 911.
I mean.... I don't get it.
The fuck are you rambling about? Why does it have to be a CT? I'm more inclined to believe that our government doesn't grasp anything about that region of the world and thinks that appeasement works when, in reality, the only thing those people respond to is brute force.
We're playing a double game with Pakistan and it's biting us in the ass. We try to play nice with Pakistan, sending them billions of dollars, nurturing them and slowly urging them on when in reality we should be holding a gun to their collective temple and demanding that they turn these guys over.
Nothing CT about it.
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Real simple numbnuts
Cleared of charges but was convicted and will serve 20-life
if you cant see that. i just dont know what else to say
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Getting 20 years for murdering 200 people isn't bad. Mal some of your "homeboys" have received more time for getting caught shoplifting 3 times under CA's 3 strikes and you’re out law. It doesn't make you angry that an Al Qaeda member who is responsible for the murder of 200 innocent people, who was not an American citizen, who had no connection with this country whatsoever besides his fevered attempts to destroy American interests and kill American people, is probably going to be sent home (receiving a hero's welcome home of course) after 20 years in American prison with 3 meals a day, shelter and cable TV that is being subsidized with your tax money?
Maybe you are too ignorant to engage in serious debate. Not just you, but everyone here who thinks this isn't a travesty. The bigger issue besides this farce of a verdict is what happens the next time and the time after that. The American criminal justice system is not equipped to handle foreign terrorists that wage war against the United States. That is why we have military tribunals and why Guantanamo was opened in the first place.
Those of you who have even the slightest bit of understanding of what is at stake here should be furious over this verdict and the potential ramifications it will have for future Al Qaeda prosecutions. I spent an entire semester being taught by a federal judge (who is still on the bench by the way) with prosecutorial experience in terrorism cases. I memorized the patriot act, FISA, the material support statute of the U.S. Code ( as well as article 7, sections of the UCMJ, the AUMF which was passed by Congress giving Bush the power to invade Iraq and Afghanistan)and every other piece of legislation that was introduced since 911 to fight terrorism. I sat through lectures by FBI agents, the defense attorney of Al Qaeda convert Jose Padilla and case study after case study to the point of nausea. Point blank, I know what the fuck I'm talking about and 99% of you don’t
Guilt and innocence are going to be weighed against revealing state secrets, embedded terrorist informants, counter terrorism measures and while that is being mulled over, the prospect of a known terrorist going free is going to hinge on variables such as the judge, the jury pool and the ability of the prosecutor versus the talent of the defense attorney. These are not routine criminal prosecutions and should not be treated as such for a multitude of reasons. If this latest verdict is any indication of things to come, we are royally fucked. You want to talk about emboldening the enemy? You think someone willing to die for their cause wouldn’t murder 200 people and receive 20 years in an American prison as their punishment? I just hope that when one of these martyrs comes to that realization, you or someone you love isn’t among the pile of rubble that is left behind.
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Real simple numbnuts
Cleared of charges but was convicted and will serve 20-life
if you cant see that. i just dont know what else to say
You have nothing else to say because you don't know shit aboutlaw, so go back to dissecting frogs and sticking thermometersin peoples' asses.
Even Webb - a DEMOCRAT SENATOR said this was a disaster. But oh yeah - Mr. $300 shades knows best. ::)
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Real simple numbnuts
Cleared of charges but was convicted and will serve 20-life
if you cant see that. i just dont know what else to say
Hey, Einstein!!
The other big-eared buffoon (who happens to be a light-skinned black man) said this was a slam-dunk case.
Over 200 people DEAD (a dozen of whom are fellow Americans); this terrorist slime gets convicted of "conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property".
If you can't see that, again ARE YOU SMOKING ROCKS? Plus, if the civilian trial BLEW THIS, what make you think this piece of garbage will serve even HALF of that sentence?
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You have nothing else to say because you don't know shit aboutlaw, so go back to dissecting frogs and sticking thermometersin peoples' asses.
Even Webb - a DEMOCRAT SENATOR said this was a disaster. But oh yeah - Mr. $300 shades knows best. ::)
Shut the fuck up. Its not about law right now. You idiot. Its not about party. Its about your misleading ass title.. I dont like it either, but i wont play this game just to get people to see my thread. Thats like a girl who gossips and puts 20s on 10s to make it sound better...Just say he was convicted with the lesser of all charges and youre pissed about it. So again take my muthafuckin experience as a basis for me to comment on something out of it. Just because i disagree with your monkey ass method of doing something, dosent make me wrong. For the record you fuckin tard. I dont like the verdict. But i dont like your thread title. Its misleading and could be done smarter. Now i tried to be nice to your dumb ass by pointing out examples and saying youre better than that, but you insist on being a dick about it. Fuckin dumbass
Option D Out
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Hey, Einstein!!
The other big-eared buffoon (who happens to be a light-skinned black man) said this was a slam-dunk case.
Over 200 people DEAD (a dozen of whom are fellow Americans); this terrorist slime gets convicted of "conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property".
If you can't see that, again ARE YOU SMOKING ROCKS? Plus, if the civilian trial BLEW THIS, what make you think this piece of garbage will serve even HALF of that sentence?
Jesus h christ. What the fuck am i doing here... ::) listen fuckstick
I DONT LIKE THE OUTCOME OF THE CASE EITHER>> ITS LIKE REALLY FUCKED UP...But the title says he was "cleared of charges" not "cleared of most charges" "cleared of some Charges" "cleared of the most serious charges" It says "cleared of charges" ...but the dude will actually serve 20-life. Please tell me you see where im coming from because im damn near starting to loose faith in the human race
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Shut the fuck up. Its not about law right now. You idiot. Its not about party. Its about your misleading ass title.. I dont like it either, but i wont play this game just to get people to see my thread. Thats like a girl who gossips and puts 20s on 10s to make it sound better...Just say he was convicted with the lesser of all charges and youre pissed about it. So again take my muthafuckin experience as a basis for me to comment on something out of it. Just because i disagree with your monkey ass method of doing something, dosent make me wrong. For the record you fuckin tard. I dont like the verdict. But i dont like your thread title. Its misleading and could be done smarter. Now i tried to be nice to your dumb ass by pointing out examples and saying youre better than that, but you insist on being a dick about it. Fuckin dumbass
Option D Out
thank you i said that at the beginning of this post, and all that fuckstick does is change the subject, typ.
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Jesus h christ. What the fuck am i doing here... ::) listen fuckstick
I DONT LIKE THE OUTCOME OF THE CASE EITHER>> ITS LIKE REALLY FUCKED UP...But the title says he was "cleared of charges" not "cleared of most charges" "cleared of some Charges" "cleared of the most serious charges" It says "cleared of charges" ...but the dude will actually serve 20-life. Please tell me you see where im coming from because im damn near starting to loose faith in the human race
WRONG - cleared of all but the one bogus charge that the janitor could have been convicted of.
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Jesus h christ. What the fuck am i doing here... ::) listen fuckstick
I DONT LIKE THE OUTCOME OF THE CASE EITHER>> ITS LIKE REALLY FUCKED UP...But the title says he was "cleared of charges" not "cleared of most charges" "cleared of some Charges" "cleared of the most serious charges" It says "cleared of charges" ...but the dude will actually serve 20-life. Please tell me you see where im coming from because im damn near starting to loose faith in the human race
First, the word is, "LOSE", O brilliant one.
Second, I'm fully aware of the title of the thread. When you think of "terrorist", the first thing that comes to mind is that this fool KILLED someone. In this case, it's over 200 people. He got cleared of those charges. He was charged with "conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property". Heck, spray-painting "Army Sucks" on a recruiting station is "conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property".
Again, Holder called this a slam dunk. In fact, his and Obama's ENTIRE ARGUMENT for shutting down Gitmo was that these numbskulls would receive virtually the same sentence in civilian courts that they would in military tribunals in Gitmo.
For some STRANGE reason, I don't think this fool would have walked with just "conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property", had he been tried in Gitmo.
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First, the word is, "LOSE", O brilliant one.
Second, I'm fully aware of the title of the thread. When you think of "terrorist", the first thing that comes to mind is that this fool KILLED someone. In this case, it's over 200 people. He got cleared of those charges. He was charged with "conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property". Heck, spray-painting "Army Sucks" on a recruiting station is "conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property".
Again, Holder called this a slam dunk. In fact, his and Obama's ENTIRE ARGUMENT for shutting down Gitmo was that these numbskulls would receive virtually the same sentence in civilian courts that they would in military tribunals in Gitmo.
For some STRANGE reason, I don't think this fool would have walked with just "conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property", had he been tried in Gitmo.
For real? ::) we pointin out typos. ok you do that
Alls im saying is to say someone got off but will serve 20-life... its wrong.
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thank you i said that at the beginning of this post, and all that fuckstick does is change the subject, typ.
280 charges dropped - 1 bogus one stuck - yeah great victory - for TEAM "THE ONE"
ha ha ha
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For real? ::) we pointin out typos. ok you do that
Alls im saying is to say someone got off but will serve 20-life... its wrong.
Details obviously aint your thing. I hope that changes before you decide to do surgery on someone.
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280 charges dropped - 1 bogus one stuck - yeah great victory - for TEAM "THE ONE"
ha ha ha
You are so not getting.. Nobody likes this, but im still not gonna use mark twain like hyperbole to get it accross. ITs just not responsible. Just say what really happened. Its not that tough.
Terroist asshole gets off on serious charges, but still gets 20-life..
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Details obviously aint your thing. I hope that changes before you decide to do surgery on someone.
So he isnt gonna get 20 to life?
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So he isnt gonna get 20 to life?
No, he was cleared of charges, haven't you heard?
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And Obviously you arent big on details and the truth....Obama called Swat on Grandmothers
Insurance company sent me 40% rate increase because of obama care
Terroist got cleared of charges...
All of those are threads by you where you were caught misleading and leaving shit out....so...save your sly monkey ass insults to my intelligence and just have a conversation like a grown man. I think you mislead and showed you examples of why. Just tell me why you think what you wrote was 100% full and accurate without all the other shit about my educational background.
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They filed 280 charges against this guy for murder of over 200 people, plus one charge of conspiracy to destroy govt property.
The murder charges were all dropped and they found him gulty of the equavalent of paintin graffitii on a tank. Yeah great victory asswipe. ::) ::)
Plus, to boot, not that I expect you to remotely grasp this concept due to your leftist leanings, the judge in this case set the precedent of tossing all evidence arguably a result of coercive techniques.
So guess what Mal - KSM - GITMO, and all the rest of these killers are going to stay inGITMO frever and neither get a military trial or another civi trial, all due to the utter incompetence of Obama/Holder.
Again - if a guy comes, rapes your wife, kills your kids, burns the house down, sends you a note as to how happy he was doing it, are you ok with all those charges being dropped and cleared and him only getting a minor weapons' charge?
YES OR NO?
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call him for what he is, a liar ;D
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call him for what he is, a liar ;D
Coming from the hack who steals others posts, yes whatever. don't you have Arnolds' thread to reply to?
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:D :D :D
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They filed 280 charges against this guy for murder of over 200 people, plus one charge of conspiracy to destroy govt property.
The murder charges were all dropped and they found him gulty of the equavalent of paintin graffitii on a tank. Yeah great victory asswipe. ::) ::)
Plus, to boot, not that I expect you to remotely grasp this concept due to your leftist leanings, the judge in this case set the precedent of tossing all evidence arguably a result of coercive techniques.
So guess what Mal - KSM - GITMO, and all the rest of these killers are going to stay inGITMO frever and neither get a military trial or another civi trial, all due to the utter incompetence of Obama/Holder.
Again - if a guy comes, rapes your wife, kills your kids, burns the house down, sends you a note as to how happy he was doing it, are you ok with all those charges being dropped and cleared and him only getting a minor weapons' charge?
YES OR NO?
nO I WOULDNT LIKE IT . But if guy was facing 20 years-Life i still couldnt say he got off......because he will be in jail for next 20 years. Would i want him to get more.. yes.. But i just dont have the extreme hyperbole in my DNA... i thought women and mark twain did that
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But he was convicted of a charge and will serve time, you dont see how your title is misleading?
Cuz i can say "Terroist convicted of charge and will face 20 to life sentence" and i would be right.
Not only that, ...he's also not the first terrorist ever to be tried in a civilian court.
Sounds to me like people are screaming for a reason to scream and hate on Obama.
And if the judge hadn't thrown out that evidence, he would have grounds to appeal.
Rightly or wrongly, the guy is going away for 20 yrs to life, will more than likely die in prison, and they're complaining? ???
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Jesus h christ. What the fuck am i doing here... ::) listen fuckstick
I DONT LIKE THE OUTCOME OF THE CASE EITHER>> ITS LIKE REALLY FUCKED UP...But the title says he was "cleared of charges" not "cleared of most charges" "cleared of some Charges" "cleared of the most serious charges" It says "cleared of charges" ...but the dude will actually serve 20-life. Please tell me you see where im coming from because im damn near starting to loose faith in the human race
The title also doesn't say "cleared of all charges", maybe you just assumed wrong.
George, 33,
What are the chances this guy can get off this remaining charge on appeal?
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Not only that, ...he's also not the first terrorist ever to be tried in a civilian court.
Sounds to me like people are screaming for a reason to scream and hate on Obama.
And if the judge hadn't thrown out that evidence, he would have grounds to appeal.
Rightly or wrongly, the guy is going away for 20 yrs to life, will more than likely die in prison, and they're complaining? ???
If they would have gave him death by hanging 333 would say Obama sucked because they should ave burned him at the stake ::)
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Jag, if you know as much about American law as you do about wiping your ass, then I would venture to say you're full of shit. How do you know he will die in prison? How do you know that he would have grounds to appeal? What law school did you attend again? Stick to posting fantasy land conspiracy theories that people mock, posting with gimmick accounts and inventing facts out of thin air.
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The title also doesn't say "cleared of all charges", maybe you just assumed wrong.
George, 33,
What are the chances this guy can get off this remaining charge on appeal?
For real skip.. you get the shaq face for that
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For real skip.. you get the shaq face for that
Too bad that doesn't come with his paycheck, :D
What's all this Option D and your name change. I must have missed a thread somewhere.
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Getting 20 years for murdering 200 people isn't bad. Mal some of your "homeboys" have received more time for getting caught shoplifting 3 times under CA's 3 strikes and you’re out law. It doesn't make you angry that an Al Qaeda member who is responsible for the murder of 200 innocent people, who was not an American citizen, who had no connection with this country whatsoever besides his fevered attempts to destroy American interests and kill American people, is probably going to be sent home (receiving a hero's welcome home of course) after 20 years in American prison with 3 meals a day, shelter and cable TV that is being subsidized with your tax money?
Maybe you are too ignorant to engage in serious debate. Not just you, but everyone here who thinks this isn't a travesty. The bigger issue besides this farce of a verdict is what happens the next time and the time after that. The American criminal justice system is not equipped to handle foreign terrorists that wage war against the United States. That is why we have military tribunals and why Guantanamo was opened in the first place.
Those of you who have even the slightest bit of understanding of what is at stake here should be furious over this verdict and the potential ramifications it will have for future Al Qaeda prosecutions. I spent an entire semester being taught by a federal judge (who is still on the bench by the way) with prosecutorial experience in terrorism cases. I memorized the patriot act, FISA, the material support statute of the U.S. Code ( as well as article 7, sections of the UCMJ, the AUMF which was passed by Congress giving Bush the power to invade Iraq and Afghanistan)and every other piece of legislation that was introduced since 911 to fight terrorism. I sat through lectures by FBI agents, the defense attorney of Al Qaeda convert Jose Padilla and case study after case study to the point of nausea. Point blank, I know what the fuck I'm talking about and 99% of you don’t
Guilt and innocence are going to be weighed against revealing state secrets, embedded terrorist informants, counter terrorism measures and while that is being mulled over, the prospect of a known terrorist going free is going to hinge on variables such as the judge, the jury pool and the ability of the prosecutor versus the talent of the defense attorney. These are not routine criminal prosecutions and should not be treated as such for a multitude of reasons. If this latest verdict is any indication of things to come, we are royally fucked. You want to talk about emboldening the enemy? You think someone willing to die for their cause wouldn’t murder 200 people and receive 20 years in an American prison as their punishment? I just hope that when one of these martyrs comes to that realization, you or someone you love isn’t among the pile of rubble that is left behind.
Wow GW, why can't you post like this all the time, ...clear, well reasoned, articulate, and devoid of childish insults.
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Why not just change the thread title to "cleared of all but 1 charge" and move on ffs.
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If they would have gave him death by hanging 333 would say Obama sucked because they should ave burned him at the stake ::)
Mal - I don't expect you to grasp the intricate details of this - but its a legal disaster. There is no way to spin this by hanging your $300 Granny Glasses on it.
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The title also doesn't say "cleared of all charges", maybe you just assumed wrong.
George, 33,
What are the chances this guy can get off this remaining charge on appeal?
;D :-X
Jag, if you know as much about American law as you do about wiping your ass, then I would venture to say you're full of shit. How do you know he will die in prison? How do you know that he would have grounds to appeal? What law school did you attend again? Stick to posting fantasy land conspiracy theories that people mock, posting with gimmick accounts and inventing facts out of thin air.
Doncha know, googly-eyes has a 160 IQ!
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Too bad that doesn't come with his paycheck, :D
What's all this Option D and your name change. I must have missed a thread somewhere.
Damn you missed it. Its a lot now but basically it went like this.. Someone called Billy Min gay. He goes off.
then he goes in on hedge i think about his lifts and bodybuilding and what not and then he says
"and if any of you motherfuckers want to come to Indiana we can
A-Compare lifts with me
B-Compare contest record with me
C-Compare life success (something like that)
D-Want to fight
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Mal - I don't expect you to grasp the intricate details of this - but its a legal disaster. There is no way to spin this by hanging your $300 Granny Glasses on it.
Im not spinning it. YOu are the one who spinned it. I said exactly what it is. You said he was clear of charges and i say he got 20-life.. we are both right.. correct?
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Are you guys happy now - I changed the title to make you ignorant fools happy.
Regardless - its a complete legal fisaco and even Jim Webb, Dem. VA realizes it.
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Nice.. very nice. and accurate.
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Are you guys happy now - I changed the title to make you ignorant fools happy.
Regardless - its a complete legal fisaco and even Jim Webb, Dem. VA realizes it.
Your title was fine. As Skip pointed out, you never said he was cleared of ALL charges.
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Your title was fine. As Skip pointed out, you never said he was cleared of ALL charges.
and now you get the shaq face
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and now you get the shaq face
Care to point out where in 333's thread title it said, "ALL charges dropped"? Fact of the matter is that charges were indeed dropped, 224 of them.
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Hair splitting. This is nothing short of a disaster.
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Im not spinning it. YOu are the one who spinned spun it. I said exactly what it is. You said he was clear of charges and i say he got 20-life.. we are both right.. correct?
Fixed.
Option E
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Fixed.
Option E
Im not sure we covered option e. If option D was (want to fight) im afraid of what Option E is.. ::)
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Care to point out where in 333's thread title it said, "ALL charges dropped"? Fact of the matter is that charges were indeed dropped, 224 of them.
you want the double shaq face.. you know what the hell he was talkin about..
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Jag, if you know as much about American law as you do about wiping your ass, then I would venture to say you're full of shit. How do you know he will die in prison? How do you know that he would have grounds to appeal? What law school did you attend again? Stick to posting fantasy land conspiracy theories that people mock, posting with gimmick accounts and inventing facts out of thin air.
GW, I don't claim to know alot about American law, but I do know that if evidence is improperly admitted, a conviction based on that evidence would get tossed on appeal.
I assume he would die in prison because I can't see anyone wanting this guy to remain alive.
I never claimed to attend law school, ...but I do watch Law & Order, ...and I once stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.
I don't use a gimmick account.
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you want the double shaq face.. you know what the hell he was talkin about..
Yeah, he was talking about the 224 murder charges that were dropped.
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Yeah, he was talking about the 224 murder charges that were dropped.
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you want the double shaq face.. you know what the hell he was talkin about..
Yeah Mal - hanging your hat on a minor charge while the other 280 are dropped is a real victory? ::) ::) ::)
This is like saying the stim Bill was a success becaus some pet shelter got an upgrade in bumblebfuck Wisconsin, despite the $860 billion dollar price tag.
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;D
You're too smart to go down the road of allying yourself with blacken007.
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berzerkfairy made a funny ;D
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Yeah Mal - hanging your hat on a minor charge while the other 280 are dropped is a real victory? ::) ::) ::)
This is like saying the stim Bill was a success becaus some pet shelter got an upgrade in bumblebfuck Wisconsin, despite the $860 billion dollar price tag.
i swear you dumb...I DONT LIKE THE FACT THAT HE GOT OFF ON THE MINOR CHARGE...
there is that better.. its only the 10th time posted it in this thread
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Time for Holder to go
November 18, 2010
by Ed Morrissey
www.hitair.com
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Let’s face it. Barack Obama and Eric Holder gambled their entire national-security credibility on the Ahmed “Foopie” Ghailani trial, arguing that they could get convictions of detainees captured abroad by military and intelligence assets while using federal courts as a venue rather than the military commissions that Congress repeatedly authorized for that purpose. Holder scolded critics who pointed out all of the reasons that such a strategy was much more likely to fail for “politicizing” the process, especially in regard to the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose case is more problematic than Ghailani’s, where the FBI did a large part of the investigation before intelligence assets were used to seize and interrogate Ghailani.
The failure of Holder’s DoJ to win anything more than a single conspiracy count against Ghailani as a result of using a process designed for domestic criminals than wartime enemies shows that the critics had it right all along. It also shows that both Obama and Holder have been proven spectacularly wrong, since a man who confessed to the murder of over two hundred people will now face as little as 20 years, with a big chunk of whatever sentence Foopie receives being reduced by time already served.
The administration is left with three choices in regards to Ghailani: announce that they will release him at the appointed date whenever his sentence ends, announce that they will hold him indefinitely without regard to the court’s ruling on the matter while referring the case back to a military commission despite his acquittals, or refuse to state which they will do and hope the issue falls to the next administration.
The first will mean that the US will knowingly release a master al-Qaeda terrorist with more than two hundred murders under his belt; the second will mean that the trial they staged was nothing but a sham. And the third will be a cowardly dodge.
Such is the state in which Holder as Attorney General has left the US. Either the US is so inept that it will eventually release a man who attacked two of its embassies abroad (which was an act of war by al-Qaeda) or that the DoJ may commit an impeachable act by knowingly submitting a defendant to double jeopardy, whether in this administration or a future administration. By committing to the civilian criminal system and assigning judicial jurisdiction where it never belonged, those are the only options left.
It was that decision that created the entirely predictable set of decisions that forced the judge to exclude the evidence gleaned by intelligence interrogation that proved Ghailani guilty — a cascade of consequences foreseen by critics and arrogantly sneered at by this administration as “politicization.” It’s both the arrogance and the incompetence that requires Eric Holder’s termination as Attorney General. Holder made these decisions and hotly defended them as perfectly reasonable, with no reduced chance of getting convictions in these cases.
A less arrogant — and less ideological — Attorney General would have heeded Congress’ warnings and reconsidered the wisdom of the idea of shoehorning foreign-captured war criminals into venues where they have never been adjudicated before now. And a less arrogant administration would have not defied the will of Congress, which three times set up military commission processes for these very cases, and for the very reasons that the DoJ spectacularly failed this week.
There could be no greater failure by the DoJ in this war on terror than to get these decisions wrong, especially in light of the avalanche of criticism over those decisions and the administration’s reaction to it. Holder should hand in his resignation before he makes the same mistake with the other terrorists our military and intelligence assets risked their lives to keep off the battlefield forever. His continued presence insults their work, insults Congress, and insults our desire for justice for 9/11, the USS Cole bombing, the two embassy bombings, and the other terrorist attacks and plots we’ve managed to stop through a forward strategy on the war on terror. If a resignation is not forthcoming, the Senate and House Judiciary committees should start hearings to determine why Holder remains in this position.
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Perfectly put.
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When Failure is a Habit
By Michael Gerson
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WASHINGTON -- The closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison and civilian trials for terrorists were more than policy changes proposed by Barack Obama as a presidential candidate. They were presented as a return to constitutional government -- a dividing line from an uncivilized past.
The indefinite detention of terrorists, according to Obama, had "destroyed our credibility when it comes to the rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment." Testifying last year before Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder not only defended a New York trial for lead 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, he lectured, he taunted, he preened. Unlike others, he was not "scared" of what Mohammed would say at trial. Failure was "not an option." This case, he told a reporter, would be "the defining event of my time as attorney general."
Which it certainly has been. Under Holder's influence, American detainee policy is a botched, hypocritical, politicized mess.
The case of embassy bomber Ahmed Ghailani -- the only Guantanamo Bay detainee the Obama administration has brought to trial in the United States -- was intended to increase public faith in civilian prosecutions. But a terrorist hugging his lawyers in victory can't be considered a confidence builder. Days before the Ghailani verdict, the White House admitted that Mohammed, because of massive, public resistance, would not be seeing the inside of a Manhattan courtroom anytime soon. "Gitmo," one official told The Washington Post, "is going to remain open for the foreseeable future."
Where do these developments leave Holder, for whom failure is not only an option but a habit? A recent profile by Wil Hylton in GQ magazine attempts to put his tenure in the best possible light -- the lonely, naive man of principle undone by politics. But the portrait is unintentionally devastating. Holder clearly views the war on terrorism as a distraction. "The biggest surprise I've had in this job," he told Hylton, "is how much time the national security issues take." He was oblivious to predictable reactions in the Mohammed case. "The political furor that erupted next," says the article, "took Holder completely by surprise." The attorney general has been stripped of authority over the trial venue by the White House. And Holder's unshakable legal principles, it turns out, were more like poses.
"In case after case, he seems to have reconciled himself to policies that he would have once condemned," concludes Hylton, a true progressive believer. "As we went back and forth, I began to realize that it was impossible to know how much of Holder's argument he really believed, and how much he was merely willing to say."
Holder clearly believes that his virtue was violated by politics. But there is a better explanation. President Obama's undeniable continuity in conducting the war on terrorism -- the use of indefinite detention, Guantanamo Bay and targeted killing of terrorists -- reflects the continuity of the threat. These measures did not result from some anti-constitutional ideology. They were difficult, conflicted but reasonable responses to an ongoing terrorist offensive -- a war that is more than a metaphor. Civilian courts were not designed for high-profile enemy combatants such as Mohammed, who would use a New York trial to embrace martyrdom and encourage violence. The use of military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay is fully constitutional, approved by Congress and consistent with wartime precedent.
Obama seems to be realizing -- gradually, reluctantly -- that applying the rules of war in the midst of a war does not destroy the credibility of the rule of law or encourage terrorist recruitment. But his public inability to admit this shift seems to be leading to the worst of possible outcomes. In all likelihood, Mohammed won't be tried in a civilian court. But Obama's progressive allies would revolt against a military tribunal for the killer of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl and the mastermind of 9/11. So Mohammed is left in legal limbo. This, in its own way, does seem at odds with the rule of law -- a prisoner condemned to detention without trial because a president cannot admit he was wrong.
How does Obama back down and accept a tribunal? He could begin by appointing an attorney general who understands the requirements of national security. Some on the left believe Holder should resign out of principle. Some on the right believe he should leave because he is out of his depth. Such bipartisanship should not go to waste.
michaelgerson(at)washpost.com
Copyright 2010, Washington Post Writers Group
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REVIEW & OUTLOOKNOVEMBER 19, 2010.The Verdict on Holder
How to botch a terrorist trial and harm the U.S. reputation for justice..
Article Comments (87) more in Opinion ».
www.wsj.com
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Terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was acquitted Wednesday on 284 of 285 counts associated with murdering 212 innocents, but the verdict on Attorney General Eric Holder was guilty as charged. His strategy of force-feeding terrorists into the civilian court system has turned into a legal and security fiasco.
Ghailani was indicted in 2001 for his role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Pakistani military captured him after a July 2004 battle and the CIA held him at a secret location until he was transferred in 2006 to Guantanamo with 13 other high-value detainees. Ghailani admitted his role during interrogation, and in 2008 military prosecutors charged him with war crimes. But last year the Obama Administration transferred him to downtown Manhattan to await a civilian trial.
The follies began early when Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that prosecutors could not call a key witness, Hussein Abebe. Mr. Abebe was to testify that he sold Ghailani the TNT that blew up the embassy in Dar es Salaam, killing 11. Authorities learned of Mr. Abebe from Ghailani, who named him during his CIA interrogation, and defense lawyers claimed the interrogation was abusive.
"The government has elected not to litigate the details of Ghailani's treatment while in CIA custody," Judge Kaplan noted in his ruling. "It has sought to make this unnecessary by asking the Court to assume in deciding this motion that everything Ghailani said while in CIA custody was coerced." Since the government had not demonstrated that Mr. Abebe's testimony was "sufficiently remote or attenuated" from the alleged coercion of Ghailani, Judge Kaplan held the testimony inadmissible. Prosecutors elected not to appeal and also chose not to use Ghailani's confession, which he later repudiated.
Mr. Holder's response was dismissive. "We are talking about one ruling, in one case by one judge," he told reporters. "I think it's too early to say that at this point the Ghailani matter is not going to be successful."
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Associated Press
The blunder was Mr. Holder's decision to dump Ghailani into the civilian system when a perfectly adequate military tribunal was available.
.It's not too early now. The dozen civilian jurors issued one of the more puzzling verdicts in recent history, convicting him on one charge of conspiracy to destroy government property but acquitting him of conspiring to kill Americans. One news report suggests the verdict was a compromise to appease one juror who was holding out for an acquittal on all charges. We may learn more in the days ahead, but the blunder wasn't the jury's or Judge Kaplan's. They were working with the bad hand they were dealt under the rules of criminal due process that are designed to protect the innocent, not admitted enemy combatants.
The blunder was Mr. Holder's decision to dump Ghailani into the civilian system when a perfectly adequate military tribunal was available. Despite interminable legal challenges from white-shoe law firms and the political left, the Supreme Court has ruled that military commissions are lawful and part of a long U.S. tradition from revolutionary days through FDR. Their advantage is that military tribunals have somewhat more liberal rules of evidence and are designed to handle classified material in a way that protects national security without disqualifying pertinent facts.
Mr. Holder's choice was wholly political, intended to appease the anti-antiterror left that helped to elect President Obama. In a bad decision for the ages, last November he even proposed to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed near Ground Zero.
That plan was run out of town by Democrats, with New York Senator Chuck Schumer saying in April that the Administration was never going to get its New York trial and that "they should just say it already." Mr. Holder's department nonetheless waited until after the recent election to disclose to the Washington Post last week that he won't hold any trials for KSM and other Gitmo terrorists until after the 2012 election. Where's the candor and competence of Alberto Gonzales when you really need them?
The jurors did do Mr. Holder the favor of convicting Ghailani on the one charge. Had they acquitted him on all counts, Mr. Holder would have been left with the choice of letting a terrorist go free to kill Americans again, or ignoring the verdict and holding him indefinitely in Guantanamo as an enemy combatant. As Judge Kaplan noted during the trial, Ghailani's "status as an 'enemy combatant' probably would permit his detention as something akin to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end, even if he were found not guilty in this case."
Savor that irony. Trying terrorists in civilian courts is supposed to showcase American justice, but even if they're acquitted they'll be held indefinitely. Meanwhile, terrorists already know that if they're captured they'll get less vigorous interrogation than your average U.S. street criminal, and that they can play their civilian trial for propaganda purposes. Mr. Holder and his boss, the President, have in their ideological willfulness managed to hurt both the reputation of U.S. civilian justice and national security.
The right policy is to separate the laws of war from the laws of civilian society. Burglars and muggers should be tried in civilian courts. Unlawful enemy combatants captured on the battlefield deserve to be held in Guantanamo and tried in military commissions. And if Mr. Holder can't tell the difference, he should find a new job.
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FFFFFUUUUUBBBBBBBOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Verdict in terror case a setback for advocates of civilian trials
By Peter Finn and Anne E. Kornblut
Friday, November 19, 2010; A02
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What was a very bad day for Ahmed Ghailani, now a convicted felon likely to spend many years in a supermax prison, was also, because of the super-charged politics surrounding Guantanamo Bay, a pretty bad day for the Obama administration.
To be sure, the 36-year-old Tanzanian was convicted Wednesday of one count of conspiracy in federal court in New York. In addition, Ghailani could well serve life in prison for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa by al-Qaeda. And it's at least debatable whether the outcome would have been different in a military commission in Cuba.
But the political reality is that the prospect of a tough sentence for conspiracy to destroy U.S. property by fire or explosives was largely swallowed up by a stunning verdict in which Ghailani was acquitted of 284 counts, including all 224 murder counts.
Across the administration, from the White House to the Justice Department, and among some human rights advocates, there was private dismay that the first trial of a Guantanamo Bay detainee brought into the United States did not result in a clear and unequivocal conviction on all counts.
Neither President Obama nor Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. commented publicly on the verdict, which other officials said they interpreted as a sign of quiet defeat. The political climate for civilian trials will grow only worse in January once Republicans - who are widely opposed to using federal courts to prosecute Guantanamo detainees - take over the House, officials said.
"There's no political will for it," said one official directly involved in Guantanamo issues, speaking of federal trials.
Even before the jury of six men and six women issued its verdict, Obama was facing some determined and bipartisan opposition to further civilian trials of Guantanamo Bay detainees. After the verdict, the president's political adversaries are likely to be even more unyielding.
On the Senate floor Thursday, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said the president should offer assurances that "terrorists will be tried from now on in the military commission system that was established for this very purpose at the secure facility at Guantanamo Bay, or detained indefinitely, if they cannot be tried without jeopardizing national security."
Senior administration officials expressed frustration with the Republican response to the Ghailani case, saying the verdict changed nothing about the legal viability of civilian courts to handle terrorist cases. "Ghailani is an unfortunate addition to a long-running saga of politicization and outright distortion of this issue," one official said.
Had the jury found Ghailani not guilty on all counts, as at least seems possible now, it could have resulted in the extraordinary spectacle of the Obama administration ignoring the judgment of a jury of ordinary Americans and returning Ghailani to military custody and possibly his old cell at Guantanamo Bay's Camp 7 detention center. That is a scenario also likely to temper judgments about proceeding with other civilian trials.
At the Justice Department, spokesman Matthew Miller said "one of the strengths of the criminal justice system is its ability to handle difficult cases.
"This was a difficult case in that there were questions about Ghailani's treatment during the previous administration" - such as the use of enhanced interrogation techniques - "that led to a key witness being excluded," he said.
The judge said the government only learned about that witness because of the CIA's questioning of Ghailani at a secret prison. It is unclear whether the witness would have been allowed to testify at a military commission.
Some leading Democrats and human rights advocates said the administration should still press the case for more federal trials of Guantanamo inmates, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-declared mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and his four co-conspirators, whose case is in semi-permanent abeyance.
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the homeland security subcommittee on intelligence, noted that Ghailani is facing a sentence stiffer than all but one meted out by military commissions.
"More than 200 years of American jurisprudence and a clear track record of success should not be thrown out the window or falsely characterized for political advantage," Harman said. "The Obama administration needs to push back."
Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, said the White House remains committed to using all available venues for trying terrorism suspects. And in the past year, with little controversy, the administration has tried numerous terrorism suspects, including individuals who planned attacks on Times Square and the New York subway system.
But the legacy cases at Guantanamo Bay have become wrapped up in a strident public debate about Obama's national security policies. Administration officials concede that Congress, by denying funding and legal authority, has blocked efforts to close the military prison, while hostile public sentiment has thwarted a series of federal trials the administration had hoped to stage.
Privately, administration officials say they are leaning toward holding detainees such as Mohammed indefinitely while proceeding with a select number of military commissions. Federal trials, if they happen, might have to await a second Obama term, if there is one.
Jack Goldsmith, a former Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration and now a Harvard Law School professor, wrote on the Lawfare blog Thursday that the military detention option is a "tradition-sanctioned, congressionally authorized, court-blessed, resource-saving, security-preserving, easier-than-trial option for long-term terrorist incapacitation. And this morning it looks more appealing than ever."
finnp@washpost.com kornbluta@washpost.com
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NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT
Andrew C. McCarthy
Archive | Log In
November 18, 2010 12:00 P.M.
A Compromise Verdict, and No Winners
The Ghailani verdict was irrational, but no more so than the decision to try him as a civilian in the first place.
A federal jury in Manhattan has returned what is transparently a compromise verdict in the terrorism trial of Ahmed Ghailani.
The case centered on al-Qaeda’s bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. There were 285 counts, including separate murder charges for each of the 224 people killed. Ghailani was acquitted on 284 of them and convicted on a single charge of conspiracy to destroy government buildings.
That sounds like a great victory for Ghailani, but it is nothing of the kind. On the one count of conviction, Ghailani faces a sentence of up to life imprisonment, and there is a mandatory minimum term of 20 years in jail. In that sense, it is a victory for the government: The object of a terrorism trial is to neutralize the terrorist, and one count will do the trick.
But beyond that, the Justice Department walks away from the case as a big loser. That’s because the Obama administration made this much more than a terrorism trial. It cherry-picked the case to be a demonstration that the civilian criminal-justice system is up to the task of trying terrorists. This was to be the “turn the clock back” moment — specifically, back to the Clinton years, when Eric Holder was deputy attorney general and when prosecution in civilian courts was the U.S. government’s principal response to the jihadist onslaught that began with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
This was the model that Barack Obama campaigned on and that the anti-anti-terrorist Left takes as an article of faith. No more Bush-era counterterrorism: no enemy combatants, no military commissions, no indefinite detention, and certainly no aggressive interrogation. The president and his attorney general are adamant that “the rule of law” must be restored.
Never mind that the laws of war — which support all the Bush-administration measures — are the rule of law during wartime. Never mind that at no point in our history have the nation’s wartime enemies been given access to the civilian justice system and endowed with all the protections and presumptions that American citizens receive. To the Obama Left, the law-enforcement approach is effective national security, a way to win the hearts and minds of Muslims and consequently make ourselves safer. It makes no difference that the country was demonstrably unsafe — and repeatedly attacked — during the Clinton years. Nor does it matter that people in Islamic countries have no idea of the legal differences between American civilian and military proceedings — they care only that we are imprisoning Muslims, not about the abstruse details of our basis for doing so.
The Obama Justice Department saw the Ghailani case as the perfect opportunity for the civilian system to prove itself. After all, the case had already been tried successfully: In 2001, before the 9/11 attacks, four terrorists were convicted and sentenced to life terms. Moreover, while critics of the law-enforcement counterterrorism model emphasize that civilian due process requires the government to hand over too much sensitive intelligence, thereby educating the enemy while we are trying to defeat the enemy, that argument was significantly diminished in Ghailani’s case. Because the case had already been tried in the civilian system, most of the relevant intelligence had already been disclosed. You could contend that this was not a good thing, but for better or worse it had already been done.
But instead of a shining moment for proponents of civilian prosecution, the Ghailani case is a body blow.
Even before the trial began, the trial judge ruled that prosecutors could not call a key witness, the man who had personally sold explosives to the defendant. The court reasoned that the government had learned of the witness during the CIA’s coercive interrogation of Ghailani, so permitting the testimony would have violated what the judge found (and the government did not dispute) were the alien terrorist’s Fifth Amendment rights. Similarly, the jury was not allowed to learn that Ghailani had confessed, and that after the bombing he had become a celebrity in al-Qaeda circles.
That is, swaddled in the protections of civilian due process, Ghailani was allowed to pose before the jury as a victim of circumstances who had no idea that the terror network was preparing simultaneous massacres at American embassies.
It seems to have worked, at least with one juror, who reportedly held out for a complete acquittal for several days. But even without the key witness and the post-bombing evidence, the circumstantial case against Ghailani seemed strong — strong enough to convince most of the jurors.
The verdict is obviously a compromise: In exchange for the holdout’s agreement to convict on one important charge, the other jurors apparently agreed to acquit on all the rest. And like most compromise verdicts, it is irrational. As a matter of law, a member of a conspiracy is responsible for all the foreseeable criminal acts of his co-conspirators. If the jury found that Ghailani was a member of the al-Qaeda conspiracy to bomb government buildings, it made no sense to acquit him of the other charges, particularly the murders of the people killed when the buildings were bombed. That is, a rational jury either convicts him of everything or acquits him of everything.
This irrationality should not be a problem for the Justice Department on appeal. Compromise verdicts are a seedy but well-recognized feature of the criminal-justice system. Trials are extraordinarily expensive and burdensome, and we want them to have finality — that’s why judges push juries hard not to hang. But sometimes, when jurors are at an impasse, the only way they can reach a resolution is by compromising on the charges. It’s not logical, but it’s a decision, and an appellate court won’t look behind it.
But that is the only good news for the Obama administration. It put all its “rule of law” chips on Ghailani and came away with 284 acquittals. Americans will naturally ask: If the civilian justice system couldn’t get this case right, how can we responsibly trust it to handle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters, a more difficult case that would require massive disclosure of sensitive intelligence under civilian due-process standards?
Though an opponent of civilian prosecutions for enemy combatants — precisely because I’ve seen their wages up close — I am inclined to cut the DOJ some slack on this result. Ghailani has been convicted and will never be able to kill Americans again. Moreover, what appears to have gone wrong here is the selection of a terrible juror. If there hadn’t been one, if there had been twelve rational people, there would have been 285 convictions and no acquittals. I’ve had nutty jurors before. It happens, and it can happen to any prosecutor.
But it’s far less apt to happen in a military commission, where the jurors are military officers. And that’s the important takeaway here: The Ghailani civilian prosecution was a mistake long before the verdict was returned, not because of the verdict that was returned. This civilian prosecution was a misadventure because politics was permitted to trump justice and, predictably, justice was not done.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.
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Great article.
Like GW and I said - leave the legal issues to those of us in the know.
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[
That sounds like a great victory for Ghailani, but it is nothing of the kind. On the one count of conviction, Ghailani faces a sentence of up to life imprisonment, and there is a mandatory minimum term of 20 years in jail. In that sense, it is a victory for the government: The object of a terrorism trial is to neutralize the terrorist, and one count will do the trick.
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Great article.
Like GW and I said - leave the legal issues to those of us in the know.
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November 22, 2010
Obama and Holder and Their Massive Failure to Think
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
www.americanthinker.com
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Well, the bubble of Obama supremacy has finally exploded in all our faces and is now lying in tatters, with little giblets of its former hot-air glory spread from here to kingdom come. The candidate who played his "Peace is just an Obama speech away" tune to the easily bamboozled left has just been dealt the final blow that crashed the big, fat hot air balloon.
The very first test case was just last week: a former Gitmo detainee, brought to NYC to be tried as a civilian with all the rights of a genuine American citizen, was found guilty on a single picayune count from a list of 280-plus murder charges.
Ahmed Ghailani was found guilty by a civilian jury on a single count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings. Never mind the hundreds murdered by means of the TNT bought by this enemy combatant, obeying the orders of his own commander in chief, Osama bin Laden. Due to constitutional protections gratuitously bestowed on him by President Barack Obama and the Department of Injustice, Ahmed Ghailani will soon be sentenced to serve a couple of decades in an American prison (minus time served, for sure), where he likely will sue the people of the United States of America over and over again with some trumped-up "cruel and unusual punishment" claim.
Wherever he is, Osama bin Laden is having one heck of a great laugh right this minute as he watches Western civilization shoot itself again, again, again, and again in the foot.
What we have here is a great, big, fat failure to think. A failure to think beyond the next sentence. A failure to give an ounce of credit to the president in charge on 9/11 and the thousands of career security personnel who devised the enemy combatant plan and engineered Gitmo to hold these bad guys indefinitely as the prisoners of war that they are. A complete failure to think through possible outcomes and plan around them.
Obama & Company have been called the Keystone Cops too many times to count. But they are far, far worse than mere incompetents. They are blowhards who believe in their own mental and moral superiority to the point where they put all Americans at gratuitous risk.
In the very first month of his presidency, Barack Obama announced the closing of Gitmo within one year. That one was a wash before the words ever cleared his teleprompter-enabled mouth.
Immediately after this thoughtless announcement, Obama moved to shut down the military tribunals set to take place at Gitmo. Despite the huge sums of taxpayer money spent on the Gitmo enterprise, Obama was ready to throw all that away on another of his liberal dream schemes. But the political will had evaporated in the Congress, and the funds to do all this were refused. If Obama had merely thought this through before the big announcement, he could have saved himself and us a lot of embarrassment, not to mention dollars.
Then Holder decided to release for public consumption hundreds of formerly classified CIA memos on prisoner interrogation despite the erstwhile bipartisan pleas of former CIA heads and many other experts. This sent a message to the entire world that our new leader would prefer to sacrifice our own valiant security officers on the altar of his political fantasies than to protect American citizens. And it told the entire Islamic terrorist network exactly how we had interrogated their comrades in arms and simultaneously sent the message that we would surrender rather than fight smart and tough in the future.
As if that were not enough, Holder soon announced -- with Obama's enthusiastic backing -- that the 9/11 terrorists would be gifted with full-court-press civilian trials in NYC, mere blocks from Ground Zero. Another massive-beyond-massive failure to think. No one in the whiz-kid cadre at the White House bothered to check with NYC and NY state officials first. Neither did they pre-gauge the furious public reaction. Neither did anyone think to check the budget problems of New York.
To make matters even more horrible, the latest shot at the bubble of Obama supremacy -- the failed civilian trial of Ahmed Ghailani -- comes at a time when real American citizens are voluntarily giving up their own right to fly upon their own airplanes due to overzealous, most likely unconstitutional searches.
Tempers are flaring daily at security checkpoints. Lawsuits are being filed. Petitions are being mounted. The citizenry is quite nearly so distraught over this disgusting double standard that it'll be a wonder if the airline industry can survive this latest Obama failure to think.
If these completely arbitrary naked scans and gropings of American citizens by the TSA could actually protect us from terrorists, then perhaps we would be willing to go along with them. But surely it has already occurred to the terrorists -- even if it has not occurred to our brilliant president and his beyond-brilliant secretary of homeland security -- that all they need to do now is use package bombs instead of people. Right -- they did that. And they have also figured out that neither the high-tech scanners nor the sexually molesting pat-downs will detect explodable things put into their little body cavities.
Now, since it is a documented fact that the modern terrorist is a Muslim male somewhere between the ages of 17 and 40, we should begin to put on our little thinking caps and realize that if Islam is indeed a religion of peace, then all that inbreeding has caused vast numbers of Muslim males to completely take seriously the dozens of dicta in the Koran to kill all infidels. In reality, no one gives a tiny whit why they blow people up, what religion they are, or how hard they had it as kids, much less if they got here because of consanguinity. The only thing any decent person cares about is stopping these Muslim males before they kill us all and put their imams in power.
Do any of these so-called smart people in the executive branch of our federal government understand that the only way to win any war is by singling out the enemy (profiling!) and vowing to destroy them before they destroy you? Dying in the name of political correctness does not appeal to truly intelligent people. And the Obama Doctrine of sucking up to Islam is nothing but a suicide pact made between utterly stupid people and the enemies who have sworn to destroy us all.
Failure to think on such a grand scale as the one we are currently witnessing from Obama & Co. is just cause to consider the possibility that this president cares far more about the rights of terrorists than he does about the citizens whom he has sworn to protect and defend.
Would some smart American please let me know when we can begin to use the word "impeach"? Until then, I am holed up in my own little household bunker -- grounded by idiots -- until further notice.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at www.kyleanneshiver.com.
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bingo.
Failure to think on such a grand scale as the one we are currently witnessing from Obama & Co. is just cause to consider the possibility that this president cares far more about the rights of terrorists than he does about the citizens whom he has sworn to protect and defend.
Wow - who said that first?????
HINT HINT INT HINT ? ? ? ?
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NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT
That sounds like a great victory for Ghailani, but it is nothing of the kind. On the one count of conviction, Ghailani faces a sentence of up to life imprisonment, and there is a mandatory minimum term of 20 years in jail. In that sense, it is a victory for the government: The object of a terrorism trial is to neutralize the terrorist, and one count will do the trick.
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Great article.
Like GW and I said - leave the legal issues to those of us in the know.
Lmao maybe you are no one of those not in the know.. and by the way this is from YOUR article
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Ex-Gitmo Detainee Ahmed Ghailani Cleared of All but One Charge in U.S. Embassy Bombings
Published November 17, 2010 | FoxNews.com
Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani was found not guilty on all but one charge Wednesday by a civilian jury in New York, in a case with ramifications for President Obama's policy toward Guantanamo and civilian trials for terror suspects.
Ghailani was acquitted in federal court on more than 280 charges in connection with the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, including one murder count for each of the 224 people killed. He was found guilty for only one charge, conspiracy to destroy government buildings.
Ghailani faces a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a possible life sentence. He will remain in custody and sentencing will take place on Jan. 25, 2011.
The acquittal is seen as a major blow to the U.S. government, as Ghailani was the first former Gitmo detainee to be tried in a civilian courtroom. The case had been viewed as a possible test case for President Barack Obama administration's aim of putting other terror detainees -- including self-professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- on trial on U.S. soil.
The anonymous federal jury deliberated over seven days, with a juror writing a note to the judge saying she felt threatened by other jurors.
Prosecutors had branded Ghailani a cold-blooded terrorist. The defense portrayed him as a clueless errand boy, exploited by senior Al Qaeda operatives and framed by evidence from contaminated crime scenes.
The judge had earlier decided that a star witness would not be allowed to testify because the witness was identified while Ghailani was held at a secret CIA camp that used harsh interrogation techniques. It is unknown what effect this witness would have had on the case.
Prosecutors had alleged Ghailani helped an Al Qaeda cell buy a truck and components for explosives used in a suicide bombing in his native Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998. The attack in Dar es Salaam and a nearly simultaneous bombing in Nairobi, Kenya, killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
The day before the bombings, Ghailani boarded a one-way flight to Pakistan under an alias, prosecutors said. While on the run, he spent time in Afghanistan as a cook and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and later as a document forger for Al Qaeda, authorities said.
He was captured in 2004 in Pakistan and held by the CIA at a secret overseas camp. In 2006, he was transferred to Guantanamo and held until the decision last year to bring him to New York.
Despite losing its key witness, the government was given broad latitude to reference Al Qaeda and bin Laden. It did -- again and again.
"This is Ahmed Ghailani. This is Al Qaeda. This is a terrorist. This is a killer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Chernoff said in closing arguments.
The jury heard a former Al Qaeda member who has cooperated with the government describe how bin Laden took the group in a more radical direction with a 1998 fatwa, or religious edict, against Americans.
Bin Laden accused the United States of killing innocent women and children in the Middle East and decided "we should do the same," L'Houssaine Kherchtou said on the witness stand.
A prosecutor read aloud the fatwa, which called on Muslims to rise up and "kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they can find it."
Other witnesses described how Ghailani bought gas tanks used in the truck bomb with cash supplied by the terror group, how the FBI found a blasting cap stashed in his room at a cell hideout and how he lied to family members about his escape, telling them he was going to Yemen to start a new life.
The defense never contested that Ghailani knew some of the plotters. But it claimed he was in the dark about their sinister intentions.
"Call him a fall guy. Call him a pawn," lawyer Peter Quijano said in his closing argument. "But don't call him guilty."
Quijano argued the investigation in Africa was too chaotic to produce reliable evidence. He said local authorities and the FBI "trampled all over" unsecured crime scenes during searches in Tanzania
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/11/17/gitmo-detainee-ahmed-ghailani-guilty-terrorism-charges/
Feds can't conjure up a guilty verdict = innocent victim
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Lmao maybe you are no one of those not in the know.. and by the way this is from YOUR article
::) ::)
Bro - I know exactly why you support obama with nonsense like that. Seriously.
Do you realize if they only charged this guy with the 280 Murders, he would be walking?
They got him on a minor charge and you think that is a victory? Ha ha ha - pathetic.
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::) ::)
Bro - I know exactly why you support obama with nonsense like that. Seriously.
Do you realize if they only charged this guy with the 280 Murders, he would be walking?
They got him on a minor charge and you think that is a victory? Ha ha ha - pathetic.
I swear you dumb, I dont like the decision. I dont.. how many times have i said that in this thread
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Do we believe that the Military personnel would use the a different standard for legality?
Where is the outrage against the jury? They are the ones who found him not guilty correct? I am very confused by how we are saying we have a great justice system, but yet when we don't get what we want out of it, then it must be shit.
Do you believe in our Justice system or not?
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Do we believe that the Military personnel would use the a different standard for legality?
Where is the outrage against the jury? They are the ones who found him not guilty correct? I am very confused by how we are saying we have a great justice system, but yet when we don't get what we want out of it, then it must be shit.
Do you believe in our Justice system or not?
Did you read anything in this thread?
Soldiers on the battlefield did not captyure these terrorists using criminal procedures used in civlian court rooms. This is so basic and so obvious, I cant even believe we are discussing this.
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Do we believe that the Military personnel would use the a different standard for legality?
Where is the outrage against the jury? They are the ones who found him not guilty correct? I am very confused by how we are saying we have a great justice system, but yet when we don't get what we want out of it, then it must be shit.
Do you believe in our Justice system or not?
Um, retard the judge threw out a huge piece of key evidence and in the criminal justice system a single juror can force a mistrial or acquittal. That's why trying terrorists captured on the battlefield in a civilian courtroom is idiotic. The outrage is against our brilliant attorney general who forced this case into a civilian court room in the first place. Just because we have a great criminal justice system doesn't mean that every single case imaginable should be tried within its boundaries. The American Criminal Justice system that prosecutes pursesnatchers and embezzlers is not the proper forum to try international terrorists that wage war against the United States from abroad. Hence there are military tribunals.
Hope this helps.
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Additionally - jurors can be completely idiotic.
Look at this case. They found him guilty of conspiracy but not the resultant acts of murder.
Geez! This is law 101 for fucks sake. If you find someone guilty of conspracy for something, they by extension are guilty for all of the resultant acts of those part of the conspiracy.
This would be like saying a co-conspirator of Lee Harvey Oswald, who gave him the gun, drove him to the School Book Depository, provided a him with a false ID would only be liable for a weapons charge and counterfeiting charge.
Its utterly incomprehensible what Holder allowed to take place
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I swear you dumb, I dont like the decision. I dont.. how many times have i said that in this thread
bump
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bump
Bump for what? You are not educated or informed on legal issues the same as I know nothing about medical shit.
Trust myself and GW - you are clueless on the ramificatons of this.
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Bump for what? You are not educated or informed on legal issues the same as I know nothing about medical shit.
Trust myself and GW - you are clueless on the ramificatons of this.
LOL.. ok