Open and shut, the terrorist confessed.
Nashiri said that while in CIA custody he was tortured into confessing to the Cole bombing and other acts of terrorism. … Nashiri was one of three terrorism suspects subjected to the controversial interrogation tactic known as waterboarding while in secret CIA custody abroad, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told Congress in February.
The procedure simulates drowning and has been deemed torture by human rights advocates and most U.S. allies. Military interrogators and FBI agents have renounced its use.
There’s not a person in the world that wouldn’t confess to bombing the Cole after years of torture that included waterboarding. How can we say we brought him to justice if we use evidence obtained through torture to put him to death?
Want to know the real reason for the trial now?
Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, legal advisor to tribunal Convening Authority Susan J. Crawford, was asked at a Pentagon news conference on Monday how the government expected to convict Nashiri on evidence that would be inadmissible in any other U.S. court. Hartmann said all evidence, including the allegations of torture, would be addressed by the tribunal.
Hartmann has spearheaded a drive by the tribunal to get high-profile cases under way before the November elections. The advisor was disqualified in May from one war crimes case after a judge ruled he lacked “independence from the prosecutor function.”
Think fast: Which countries torture prisoners into confessing, then have show trials just before elections? Was America your first guess? Should it have been?
In New York, U.N. human rights special envoy Philip Alston deemed the Guantanamo tribunal flawed for the restricted rights accorded detainees and rules that allowed coerced evidence and hearsay.
“It would violate international law to execute someone following this kind of proceeding,” Alston said at the end of a two-week U.S. visit.
We all know what happens when our government violates international law: Bush will send troops to liberate us.
The full article, written by Carol Williams of the LA Times, is a great read. We need more journalism like this.
http://www.latimes.com/news/pr…
that he underwent YEARS of torture?
that he planned the Cole explosion? i’m asking in sincerity. is there any physical evidence that links him to this particular crime?
Putting the torture fiasco aside for a moment, the evidence issue is one of the major reasons Islamic terrorism does not fit nicely within the civil, criminal justice system. You can’t realease the evidence, because the evidence is classified, and releasing it would let everyone know how you got it, perhaps endangering someone that helped out the good guys, and certainly making it harder to get the next guy.
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p>I don’t think it is unfair to mistrust the prosecution on this one, given the timing and history of Bush et al., but I sure don’t see that criminal indictments and trials are a viable alternative. They’ll all turn into circuses like the trial of Zacarias Mousoui in Virginia a few years ago anyway.
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p>This is a pretty big predicament that will face the next president, because there are zero good options.
i’d be surprised if anyone’s safety would be compromised by revealing evidence. how is this problem handles in domestic cases that involve FBI agents, or undercover cops, say?
Its how they got the evidence.
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p>My understanding of large, uncover criminal investigations is that they have a specific target, and thus an end. The undercover guys aren’t going to be undercover forever, because their cover is blown at trial. In this sense, 70 years of investigations still haven’t broken the back of organized crime, and never, ever, will. Thus, we are forced to tolerate ongoing criminality, and take it one crime at a time.
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p>Much as we might like to hope, there is no single target that, if tried and convicted, would mean the end of Islamic terrorism. Although 9/11 was probably their “best punch” we cannot tolerate an ongoing stream of terrorist activity, because the stakes are way, way higher than, say, the construction market in NYC.
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p>Also, to the extent that we have intellegence assets within the radical Islamic community, those assets are much, much harder to come by than a snitch in the mafia, and we can’t just decide to blow their cover in the way that the FBI must, and does.
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p>Counter-terrorism therefore just does not fit comfortably into an anti-crime model.
it’s nice to know that someone out there is reporting about this type of thing. Here we could have someone potentially innocent of the crime being put to death for no other reason than for the administration to show some apparent progress in bringing the Cole attackers to justice.
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p>I don’t know how W sleeps at night with all the people he’s executed, starting in Texas, without a fair trial. Surely, many of them have been innocent.