The federal government is debating whether to try an alleged co-conspirator of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in a federal court in New York City.

“In making this decision, I can assure you that this administration has only one paramount goal: to ensure that justice is done in this case,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in an address to the Senate on April 14.

The U.S. military captured Mohammed on March 1, 2003, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He was held by the CIA for several years before being transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2006.

At Guantanamo, Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding 183 times, according to a 2005 U.S. Justice Department internal memo. The knowledge of coercive interrogation techniques used on Mohammed widens the debate about his trial to include the morality of these methods used under the Bush administration.

The decision to try Mohammed in federal court instead of a military tribunal has outraged an American public concerned with cost and security risks, according to The New York Times. Evidence attained through torture may be unusable in New York state, leading to the prospect for legal maneuvering that might weaken or even undermine the case against Mohammed, according to the article.

 

The Daily Orange asks the experts, “Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be sentenced in a federal court or by a military tribunal outside New York state?”

Meet the Expert: Hossein Bashiriyeh, professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs

“I believe he should be tried in the civilian court in New York to convey the idea that the American government is giving all the privileges it can to such a criminal. It will enhance the image of the United States and its citizens as a society not focused on taking revenge, but one that holds true to the ideals of justice and liberty that the country was founded upon.”

 

Meet the Expert: Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution and author of “Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror”

“It’s important to be accurate about what the differences are between the two. … We’ve reached the point where the relevance shouldn’t be the type of system, but the fairness. If you didn’t have decent, fair rules and called it a federal court, that wouldn’t be OK. I think in the past the quality of the rules in a military court were unstable and lacking, but in this instance, I believe both systems could make a conviction.”

 

Meet the Expert: Barbara Fought, associate professor of broadcast journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and director of The Tully Center for Free Speech

“Here at The Tully Center we did a research project on access journalists and citizens have to the military court system, and we found it was woeful. There were repeated violations to the Constitution in not allowing citizens access to those kinds of proceedings. This is high profile enough that it probably won’t be an issue, but the established system of openness in civilian court leads me to support a trial in that system.”

Published on April 28, 2010 at 12:00 pm