Sept. 11 Trial Set to Have More Chaos Than Justice [View all]

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-07/sept-11-trial-set-to-have-more-chaos-than-justice.html

U.S. Brigadier General Mark Martins is an honorable man with an impossible job: Convicting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his associates of the Sept. 11 attacks without making it look like a show trial.

The arraignment on May 5 at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had all the hallmarks of a disaster in the making. The defendants refused to cooperate or even acknowledge the authority of the court. The prosecution and, for a time, the judge appeared willing to suppress the defense’s efforts to bring up the waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques used against some of the defendants. Above all this loomed the greatest challenge to the legitimacy of the tribunal: No one, inside the room or outside, thinks there is any chance that Mohammed will not end up executed.

After nearly a decade of Supreme Court decisions affording rights to Guantanamo detainees and rejecting proposed military commissions to try them, it would be reasonable to ask: How did we get here? Why are we on the brink of a trial of the century that seems unlikely to satisfy the most basic demands of criminal justice?

There is plenty of blame to go around. Part of it lies with Congress, which thwarted President Barack Obama’s campaign promise to close Guantanamo within a year. Part of it lies with the Obama administration, which initially announced its intention to give Mohammed a civilian trial in New York and then reversed itself. We also must not forget the George W. Bush administration, under which Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a month.