Ahmed Ghailani, terrorist bombing detainee, charged with 285 counts of conspiracy and murder in the 1998 terrorist bombings of the United States Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania was convicted of only one charge of conspiracy and acquitted of over 220 murders because of the Obama administration's incompetence.Barack Obama and Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder decided to have Ghailani tried in a civilian court instead of military, where he was found guilty of just one charge.
That charge was one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property and he was acquitted on four counts of conspiracy, including conspiring to kill Americans and to use weapons of mass destruction, yet the destruction caused by that one count of conspiracy resulted in the deaths of 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injury to thousands of others.
NYT:
The case has been seen as a test of President Obama’s goal of trying detainees in federal court whenever feasible, and the result seems certain to fuel debate over whether civilian courts are appropriate for trying terrorists.
All of which will not see justice because of Barack Obama's failure to understand that civilian courts are not prepared nor capable of convicting terrorists for terrorist acts, the whole reason military tribunals were set up to begin with.
In 2009, when Obama and Holder decided that the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, should be tried in a civilian court and the debated heated up about the preparedness of civilian courts to convict terrorists, Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee that "failure was not an option."
This travesty with Ahmed Ghailani shows that failure was and is the only option when they attempted to conduct a civilian trial against an enemy combatant.
The families of over 200 murder victims will never see true justice now because of Barack Obama's arrogance and incompetence.
That is a very steep price to pay for a lesson that initial reactions show the Obama administration still didn't learn and are touting the one conviction out of 285 charges as some type of accomplishment!!!
For all the smack talk against President George Bush for his assertions that terrorists be treated as terrorists and not as ordinary American citizens that simply broke the law, he cared. He understood that terrorists acts, plots, and the murder of innocent people should be punished, not rewarded by allowing civilian courts who cannot use all the evidence, including a confession, to replace military tribunals of enemy combatants.
Terrorists are enemy combatants, not civilians.
Reactions
Keep America Safe issued a statement regarding the travesty of the Ahmed Ghailani trial:
“Bad ideas have dangerous consequences. The Obama Administration recklessly insisted on a civilian trial for Ahmed Ghailani, and rolled the dice in a time of war. The Department of Justice says it’s pleased by the verdict. Ask the families of the victims if they’re pleased. And this result isn’t just embarrassing. It’s dangerous. It signals weakness in a time of war. The Ghailani trial was supposed to be a test case for future trials of 9/11 terrorists.
We urge the president: End this reckless experiment. Reverse course. Use the military commissions at Guantanamo that Congress has authorized. And, above all–accept the fact that we are at war.”
Representative Peter King, Republican of New York who will become chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee in January after the midterms put the GOP in control of the House of Representatives, also issued a statement.
“I am disgusted at the total miscarriage of justice today in Manhattan’s federal civilian court. In a case where Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was facing 285 criminal counts, including hundreds of murder charges, and where Attorney General Eric Holder assured us that ‘failure is not an option,’ the jury found him guilty on only one count and acquitted him of all other counts including every murder charge.
“This tragic verdict demonstrates the absolute insanity of the Obama Administration’s decision to try al-Qaeda terrorists in civilian courts.
“This case was doomed from the beginning when the judge excluded DOJ’s key witness who admitted selling the explosives to Ghailani. Where is the justice for the more than 200 people killed and 4,000 injured in the terrorist bombings of our U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania?
“This is a tragic wake-up call to the Obama Administration to immediately abandon its ill-advised plan to try Guantanamo terrorists like the admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in federal civilian courts. We must treat them as wartime enemies and try them in military commissions at Guantanamo.
“As the next Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, I intend to hold hearings and conduct the necessary oversight on this critical homeland security issue in the 112th Congress.”
Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee nails it when he said "This case was supposed to be the easy one, and the Obama administration failed."
Other reactions
American Spectator:
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was involved in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Africa, has been acquitted on all but one of 285 counts against him. He's still going to prison for at least 20 years and maybe for life (sentencing comes in January), but the verdict -- which seems to suggest that Ghailani is guilty of conspiracy to blow up the buildings but somehow not guilty of killing the victims -- is an embarrassment for the Obama justice department, and opponents of trying Guantanamo detainees in civilian court are rightly seizing upon it. Keep America Safe and incoming House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King each issued statements earlier this evening.
Hot Air:
Let’s face it. Barack Obama and Eric Holder gambled their entire national-security credibility on the Ahmed “Foopie” Ghailani trial, arguing that they could get convictions of detainees captured abroad by military and intelligence assets while using federal courts as a venue rather than the military commissions that Congress repeatedly authorized for that purpose. Holder scolded critics who pointed out all of the reasons that such a strategy was much more likely to fail for “politicizing” the process, especially in regard to the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose case is more problematic than Ghailani’s, where the FBI did a large part of the investigation before intelligence assets were used to seize and interrogate Ghailani.
The failure of Holder’s DoJ to win anything more than a single conspiracy count against Ghailani as a result of using a process designed for domestic criminals than wartime enemies shows that the critics had it right all along. It also shows that both Obama and Holder have been proven spectacularly wrong, since a man who confessed to the murder of over two hundred people will now face as little as 20 years, with a big chunk of whatever sentence Foopie receives being reduced by time already served.
Patterico's Pontifications:
As I explained last night, the judge who excluded the witness acknowledged that “national security motivated the CIA interrogations” because “[t]he identities and methods of others involved in those bombings, including the source of the explosives, were of critical importance to national security.” But in a civilian court, which devised exclusionary rules designed to address a different situation (typical police interrogation of criminal suspects), the CIA’s motive was not reason enough to admit the evidence. In a military tribunal, I believe the judges would have given greater weight to the CIA’s benevolent motives and admitted the evidence.
This is why Obama’s decision was such an unnecessary disaster.
You can go see the rest of the reactions and discussions over at Memeorandum.
Utter incompetence on behalf of Barack Obama and Eric Holder.
Related:
Part #2, video reaction of a family member of two of the murder victims, politicians and pundits.
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