Jonathan Hafetz, co-editor of The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law
Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement Friday that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and four other individuals allegedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks would be brought to trial in federal court takes an important—if long overdue—step towards restoring the rule of law. No longer are these men “high value detainees,” a label invented out of whole cloth to sanction their previous disappearance into a secret CIA prison and torture. After resurfacing at Guantánamo in September 2006, they are now, finally, defendants in the U.S. criminal justice system, which has shown repeatedly that it is well-equipped to handle terrorism cases while protecting legitimate national security concerns. This was the result advocated by the ACLU’s John Adams Project, and it is a welcome one.
You can also listen to a radio interview Jonathan did at The Takeaway about civilian trials for terrorists.
