Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Wall Street Journal
April 1, 2008
Pg. 16
Military prosecutors filed war-crimes charges yesterday against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an al Qaeda operative implicated in the simultaneous 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The case makes for another useful lesson in the post-9/11 military commissions process, and ought to provide a measure of justice for the atrocities, which killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands.
Currently incarcerated at Guantanamo, Ghailani procured the truck, TNT, detonators, and oxygen and acetylene canisters that comprised the suicide bomb that destroyed the Dar es Salaam embassy. He scouted for the attack and coordinated between his terror cell and the one in Nairobi. A day before the bombing, Ghailani fled to Pakistan, where he was captured in 2004 following a 10-hour firefight, part of a joint Pakistani-U.S. operation. At least 10 of the conspirators remain at large, including Osama bin Laden.
Ghailani confessed to his role in the plot during a 2007 hearing but claimed he was a dupe, for instance that he thought the TNT was "soap for washing horses." Yet Ghailani continued his service to al Qaeda after the bombing. He worked as an instructor at a terrorist training camp and forged documents, becoming at one point a bin Laden bodyguard.
Yesterday's Pentagon action classifies Ghailani as an unlawful enemy combatant and refers his case to the military tribunals that the Bush Administration and Congress established in 2006 for terror detainees. Contrary to the media liturgy, these will not be show trials. Ghailani will enjoy multiple due-process safeguards, including military and civilian legal counsel and the right to see the evidence presented against him. His sentence, which could include the death penalty, will be subject to four levels of appellate review, including by the Supreme Court.
Right on cue, the arraignment has led to the latest eruption for the Guantanamo prisoners to be turned over to civilian courts. The Bush Administration deserves credit for resisting, because the embassy bombings show the folly of the pre-9/11 approach. In retaliation, President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in August 1998, but mostly viewed the bombings as a law-enforcement concern. The perpetrators, including Ghailani, were indicted in a New York federal court, and four of them were sentenced to life without parole in May 2001. We know what came next.
Ghailani and other terrorists deserve to be prosecuted in military tribunals for violating the laws of war, most plainly by targeting civilians. He is the 15th detainee to be subjected to this process, which without a doubt will extend into the next Administration. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have come out against the tribunals, but cases like Ghailani's present a practical challenge if one of them is elected. Transferring foreign terrorists to the criminal justice system could compromise intelligence sources and methods and exclude evidence captured under battlefield conditions.
We suspect that the next President, from either party, will find the tribunals a useful tool -- and, we hope, a necessary one, given the enemies who have declared war against America and murdered its citizens.
April 1, 2008
Pg. 16
Military prosecutors filed war-crimes charges yesterday against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an al Qaeda operative implicated in the simultaneous 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The case makes for another useful lesson in the post-9/11 military commissions process, and ought to provide a measure of justice for the atrocities, which killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands.
Currently incarcerated at Guantanamo, Ghailani procured the truck, TNT, detonators, and oxygen and acetylene canisters that comprised the suicide bomb that destroyed the Dar es Salaam embassy. He scouted for the attack and coordinated between his terror cell and the one in Nairobi. A day before the bombing, Ghailani fled to Pakistan, where he was captured in 2004 following a 10-hour firefight, part of a joint Pakistani-U.S. operation. At least 10 of the conspirators remain at large, including Osama bin Laden.
Ghailani confessed to his role in the plot during a 2007 hearing but claimed he was a dupe, for instance that he thought the TNT was "soap for washing horses." Yet Ghailani continued his service to al Qaeda after the bombing. He worked as an instructor at a terrorist training camp and forged documents, becoming at one point a bin Laden bodyguard.
Yesterday's Pentagon action classifies Ghailani as an unlawful enemy combatant and refers his case to the military tribunals that the Bush Administration and Congress established in 2006 for terror detainees. Contrary to the media liturgy, these will not be show trials. Ghailani will enjoy multiple due-process safeguards, including military and civilian legal counsel and the right to see the evidence presented against him. His sentence, which could include the death penalty, will be subject to four levels of appellate review, including by the Supreme Court.
Right on cue, the arraignment has led to the latest eruption for the Guantanamo prisoners to be turned over to civilian courts. The Bush Administration deserves credit for resisting, because the embassy bombings show the folly of the pre-9/11 approach. In retaliation, President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in August 1998, but mostly viewed the bombings as a law-enforcement concern. The perpetrators, including Ghailani, were indicted in a New York federal court, and four of them were sentenced to life without parole in May 2001. We know what came next.
Ghailani and other terrorists deserve to be prosecuted in military tribunals for violating the laws of war, most plainly by targeting civilians. He is the 15th detainee to be subjected to this process, which without a doubt will extend into the next Administration. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have come out against the tribunals, but cases like Ghailani's present a practical challenge if one of them is elected. Transferring foreign terrorists to the criminal justice system could compromise intelligence sources and methods and exclude evidence captured under battlefield conditions.
We suspect that the next President, from either party, will find the tribunals a useful tool -- and, we hope, a necessary one, given the enemies who have declared war against America and murdered its citizens.