THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW – November 9, 2009

Senate Rejects Effort to Block Civilian Trials for 9/11
Victims
by: James Rosen
McClatchy Newspapers

Washington – After an emotional debate over how to keep
Americans safe, the Senate Thursday narrowly defeated an
effort to prevent civilian trials in U.S. courts for the
accused planners of the 9/11 attacks.

The Senate’s 54-45 vote to reject the measure by Sen.
Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., opens the door for President Barack
Obama to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-professed
mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to trial in
federal court, rather than the military commissions Graham
helped create.

Obama has pledged to shutter the U.S. military prison at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by January and transfer some of its
220 detainees to the U.S. for trials in civilian courts.

Three Democrats – Jim Webb of Virginia and Arkansas’
Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor – and independent Joe
Lieberman of Connecticut joined all 40 Senate Republicans
in voting for the measure.

Graham, a military lawyer who’s served active duty in the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars, pleaded with his colleagues to
back his amendment to a spending measure for the Justice
Department and other federal agencies.

“Tell the president that we’re not going to sit by as a
body and watch the mastermind of 9/11 go into civilian
court and criminalize this war,” Graham said. “If he goes
to federal court, here’s what awaits – a chaos zoo trial.”

Graham, who helped craft the 2009 Military Commissions
Act, said he wants all the Guantanamo detainees to be
tried before military tribunals. He crafted his measure
narrowly, however, to focus on Mohammed and five other
alleged Sept. 11 plotters at the Guantanamo prison.

“Khalid Sheik Mohammed didn’t rob a liquor store,” Graham
said. “He took this nation to war, and he killed 3,000 of
our innocent citizens.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat,
said federal courts have convicted 195 felons of terror-
related crimes since the 2001 attacks, while military
tribunals have produced only three convictions.

“The Graham amendment would be an unprecedented intrusion
into the authority of the executive branch of our govern-
ment to combat terrorism,” Durbin said. “To argue that we
cannot successfully prosecute a terrorist in an American
court is to ignore the truth and to ignore history.”

The Supreme Court struck down the military commission
system set up by President George W. Bush, and in a later
ruling put restrictions on revamped tribunals that Congress
had subsequently created.

Christopher Anders, the senior legislative counsel for the
American Civil Liberties Union, hailed the terrorism vote.

“Thankfully, the Senate has made the right decision by not
tying the president’s hands when it comes to prosecuting
detainees,” Anders said. “Making it more difficult to
prosecute detainees in our federal courts only serves to
delay bringing them to justice.”

A bevy of powerful senators joined the nearly three-hour
debate, among them the chairmen of the Senate Armed
Services and Judiciary committees, 2008 Republican
presidential nominee John McCain, and a former federal
judge and former prosecutors.

“We’re the most powerful nation on earth, with the most
tested court system on earth,” said Senate Judiciary
Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. “Are
we going to tell the world… we’re not up to trying the
people who have struck at us?”

————————————————————