Sen. Lindsey Graham vows to stop Civilian Trials for 9/11 Operatives
A top Senator on Sunday said he will do whatever he can to prevent alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from seeing the inside of a civilian courtroom. Sen Lindsey Graham, said that he has the votes to block a Department of Justice move to get civilian trials for the alleged Sept. 11 conspirators and a better place for the Sept. 11 leadership is in a military court at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“I think it is a big mistake to criminalize the war, to take someone you’ve held under the law of war as an enemy combatant for six or seven years, then put them in civilian court. It is a disaster waiting to happen,” Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Before the Obama Administration stopped the trial, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was ready to plead guilty. But Graham has said, he thinks civilian courts may be the right venue for some terrorism cases, such as low-level Al Qaeda operatives and the accused Christmas airliner bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, calling it an all-of-the-above approach to terrorism trials.
That won Graham support from Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo, who had once been a prosecutor. McCaskill also agrees to military trials for the very highest level operatives of 9/11.
Tags: civilian court, Cuba, DOJ, Guantanamo Bay, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Sen Lindsey Graham, Trial
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 30th, 2010 at 9:14 am and is filed under Crime & Punishment, General, In the News, Politics, Terrorism, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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