They say timing is everything. So the military's announcement that it intends to impose the death penalty after trying six detainees en masse under the constitutionally infirm system of military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay during a presidential campaign season is somewhat suspect. The decision is bound to raise a howl world wide since our European allies oppose the death penalty and the Islamic world sees the tribunals as simply a propaganda show of the same order as the trial afforded Saddam Hussein before he was hanged amid a crowd of his Shia tormentors. US civil rights attorneys have raised concerns that convictions would be based upon evidence extracted under torture and secret evidence. Strict rules against hearsay evidence used in US federal courts to insure reliability and authenticity will not be followed in tribunal proceedings.
The government has had mixed success trying alleged terrorists in civilian courts. Zacarias Moussaoui, previously labeled the "20th hijacker" (that soporific is now applied to Mohammed al-Qahtani) emerged from his federal court trial in Virginia as a deeply disturbed individual bearly able to participate in a multi-faceted international guerrilla operation. He was an embarrassment to his federal prosecutors. Jose Padilla, a Chicago homeboy and 'wanna-be' guerrilla from, won his release from indefinite military custody after his habeas corpus case went to the US Supreme Court. Prosecutors asked for thirty years to life in his civilian criminal trial for trying to plant a dirty bomb. He got seventeen.
The six now facing execution are: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; Ali Al-Aziz Ali; Ramzi Bin al-shibh; Walid Bin Attash; Mustafa Ahmad al-hawsawi; Mohammed al-Qahtani. Since September 11, 2001 three thousand or more individuals have been arrested worldwide in pursuit of al-Qaeda. Innocents have been detained and abused for years, others have been transported against their will and tortured. Our nation has paid a very high price for capturing fourteen actual leaders of the terrorist network.