PD Editorial: Terror trials belong in civilian courts

In 2011, the U.S. Justice Department abandoned plans to try self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants in a civilian court.

Three years later, the case is languishing in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and there’s reason to doubt there ever will be a verdict.

Congress forced the change of venue by barring prisoner transfers from Guantanamo to the U.S. for trial or incarceration, citing dubious concerns about cost, security and the likelihood of another terrorist attack on American soil.

That battle played out on the front pages. You had to look a little deeper inside a newspaper to find reports on the trial, in U.S. District Court in New York, of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. He was the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden and the voice of al-Qaida, declaring in October 2001 that “the storm of airplanes will not stop.”

Abu Ghaith was arrested in Turkey in March 2013 and convicted a year later following a three-week trial in the federal courthouse in Manhattan, a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. He was sentenced last month to life in prison.

There weren’t any security problems. There weren’t any unusual costs. It hardly needs to be pointed out, but there was no terrorist attack.

This trial involved a despicable crime, and it added a few details to the record, most notably Abu Ghaith’s testimony about meeting with bin Laden in a cave in Afghanistan a day after the attacks. “He said, ‘Come in, sit down.’ He said, ‘Did you learn about what happened?’ ” Abu Ghaith told the jury, continuing that bin Laden told him, “We are the ones who did it.”

Beyond that, it was routine, one of thousands managed every year by judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys in courtrooms across the country.

Many other terrorism suspects have been tried successfully in civilian courts. Among them were Zacarias Moussaoui, whose arrest for an immigration violation prevented him from taking part in the 9/11 hijackings. The suspects in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center were tried in Manhattan, so were the suspects in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Shoe-bomber Richard Reid was tried in Boston, and the case of underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was handled in Detroit.

More than 500 terrorism cases have been filed in U.S. courts since 2001, with an 87 percent conviction rate, according to research by the Center on Law and Security at the New York University law school. Several more are on the docket, including at least two more al-Qaida-linked cases in Manhattan and one in Washington involving the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

With each successful prosecution in civilian court, the flaws of the military tribunals at Guatanamo Bay become even clearer. Their procedures and their authority have been the subject of numerous legal challenges since they were created by President George W. Bush in 2001 and re-established by Congress in 2006 after the president’s order was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. A federal appeals court is considering a new challenge to their constitutionality following the conviction of an al-Qaida propagandist.

Attorney General Eric Holder says he won’t revisit the decision to try Mohammed and his co-defendants in a military tribunal. Given the congressional prohibition, he probably couldn’t change course anyway.

But evidence keeps mounting that the federal courts are not only able, they are better prepared to dispense justice than the military tribunals. Congress should allow them to handle all of these important cases.