Moussouai Gets Life Sentence For Small Part In 9/11
Punishing wrongdoers is a neccessary function of government. However,
this is America, and here the punishment must be proportional to the
crime. He is a lunatic and a fool and an attention whore, who can now waste away the rest of his life in obscurity. Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person prosecuted in connection with the
worst terrorist attack in American history, did not get the death
penalty because some jurors concluded that he had little to do with
Sept. 11.
Yet two presumed key planners of the Al Qaeda plot, Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, have not been charged, though they have
been in U.S. custody for more than three years.
A central contradiction in the Bush administration's fight against
terrorism is that bit players often have been put on trial, while those
thought to have orchestrated the plots have been held in secret for
questioning.
The difference in treatment, government officials say, stems from the
view that gathering intelligence from suspected terrorists is more
important than publicly punishing them.
Though the Moussaoui jury seemed to indicate that he had not been
directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, Mohammed has told
investigators about the plot in great detail.
Current and former intelligence officials have said that the CIA has
used aggressive interrogation techniques — including "waterboarding,"
which makes a suspect feel as if he is drowning — on captured Al Qaeda
leaders. As a result, many legal experts say it may be too late to try
Mohammed and Binalshibh in a regular court of law.
"They cannot be prosecuted because of the way they have been
interrogated," said University of Maryland law professor Michael
Greenberger, a terrorism expert who served in the Clinton
administration. "They have been subjected to very aggressive
questioning, and any statements they made now can't be used against
them."
An open trial for the Al Qaeda leaders could reveal that U.S. agents
used harsh methods, even torture, to extract information, he added.
"That has been the irony of the Moussaoui case from the beginning. We
have prosecuted a marginal character who appeared unmoored from
reality, while the real planners of the crime will not be brought
before justice in the United States," Greenberger said.
Deborah Pearlstein, a lawyer for Human Rights First, said: "After the
World Trade Center attack in 1993, there was a successful prosecution.
We got information, and we got justice. Now, in this case, I fear we
have lost the opportunity to bring the real terrorists to justice."
It is time that the government proves to America that they have been protecting us by producing those alledged criminals and putting them on trail immediately.
It MUST be a Real Old Fashioned Public American Trial, where we all get to see the evidence.
I was inspired to write this in part because of what I saw many of the 9/11
family members say today after the Moussaoui verdict. Pretty much all
of them were happy that this trial was over; expressed gratitude to the
jurors even when some wanted the death penalty; and most went on to
talk about how little has really been done including trials for the
real 9/11 planners.
None seemed to want revenge. They seemed to simply want truth and
the corrections that that truth could possibly bring to making America
stronger and safer. They all referenced the secrecy surrounding that day that the government continues to protect so intensely.
It is time to let the sun shine in on the facts and it is high time
that if we have wrongly imprisoned anyone that we let them go free.
UPDATE: Michael Isikoff is a reporter I have had many problems with, but he did make some sense on Hardball yesterday.
Isikoff: This entire Moussaoui trial was a side show.
The Justice Department indicted him at the time, they thought he might
have been the 20th hijacker. They later learned he was not. But there
was a feeling, that for altogether understandable reasons, that the country needed a trial,
the cathartic effect of a trial to deal with the most horrific crime in
American history. What this trial ought to do at this point provoke a
debate and discussion and concentration on why we haven`t tried the
people who were responsible for 9/11. But
there was a feeling, that for altogether understandable reasons, that
the country needed a trial, the cathartic effect of a trial to deal
with the most horrific crime in American history.
But the point is that after the
time that they indicted Moussaoui, we came to get into custody the
people who were directly responsible for that crime, the architect,
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (pictured here at top), Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who
was Mohammed Atta`s collaborator at every step of the way -- twice in
2001, Atta leaves the country to consult with Ramzi bin al-Shibh about
the for the attack -- the financier who was also in custody, Qualli bin
Atassh (phonetic) who helped planned it at the Malaysia meeting.
But the government has been
completely stymied about what do to with these people. Why -- and this
is the one where it is really worth connecting the dots. It goes
straight into the White House, the Oval Office and the vice president`s
office because key decisions were made about aggressive interrogation
techniques that were going to be used on these people.
Kristen Breitweiser was poignantly on target as to why we can't
prosecute the other three--something that I don't think the public in
general wants to realize. Our rendition and torture policies have made
it impossible to prosecute them. So while Bush decides that he doesn't
need to follow laws, his extra-legal activities prevent us from justice
for this tragedy. Thanks Kristen.
