PD Editorial: Terror trial

Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement that five suspected 9/11 plotters will be tried in a civilian court came eight years to the day after President George W. Bush signed an order creating military commissions and allowing unlimited detention without charges.

However, the Nov. 13 announcement didn’t mark a complete reversal of Bush’s policy. Instead, the Obama administration appears to be drawing distinctions between civilian and military targets and domestic and foreign attacks.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants are accused of orchestrating the deaths of nearly 2,900 people, most of them civilians, in suicide hijackings that ended at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

Holder named five other detainees at Guantanamo Bay who will be tried before military commissions, including a suspect in the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole that killed 17 sailors in 2000 in Yemen. The other four detainees also were involved in attacks on overseas military targets, the attorney general said.

By entrusting the 9/11 case to a civilian court, the administration reinforces a U.S. tradition of respecting the rule of law. It also chooses a venue that is recognized and respected by most of the world. And, after six years of litigation and debate over the legitimacy of military tribunals, it brings justice closer for the victims and their families — many of whom wanted the case tried in U.S. District Court.

Questions about security, decorum and even the prospect of acquittal were raised following Holder’s announcement and dominated a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday. At least some of the questions appear to be be based as much in partisan maneuvers as genuine reservations.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for example, used TV appearances to warn that holding the trial a few blocks from Ground Zero would again make the city a target for terror. Yet three years ago Giuliani had nothing but praise for the justice system that allowed 9/11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui to be tried and convicted in a civilian court in Virginia, a short distance from the Pentagon.

Federal courts have capably handled scores of high-profile cases, including the terrorist bombings of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 and New York’s World Trade Center in 1993, without compromising national security or the rule of law.

By one senator’s count, 347 people serving time in federal prison have been convicted of terror-related charges in civilian courts in the United States. There’s every reason to believe that the 9/11 defendants will be joining them.