Posted on 03/09/2011 3:51:25 AM PST by Scanian
WASHINGTON -- The new White House executive order on detainees at Guantanamo Bay has baffled critics, who say the administration needs to issue a clear decision on where it will try Sept. 11 terror mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
"I hope the president's new thinking on Guantanamo and military tribunals also signals a willingness to expedite the military prosecutions of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who praised the decision to restart military tribunals and hold prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo.
"The families of those who died have waited 10 years, and they deserve, at long last, the peace of mind and closure that these trials will bring," he added.
Debra Burlingame, whose pilot brother died in the 9/11 attacks, accused the administration of speaking with a "forked tongue" and being "deliberately vague" on the issue of what happens to Mohammed until after the 2012 elections.
"This is a cynical ploy," she said. On a conference call organized by the administration with 9/11 family members Monday, she pressed a White House lawyer about the plans for Mohammed.
"They haven't abandoned Article III [civilian] courts for Mohammed in the United States, but they're not going to say it outright," she told The Post.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Frankly, I think we’ve been hoodwinked. Nobody seems to have noticed, but when Obama announced that Gitmo was going to stay open, he also announced that he was seeking the ratification of Protocol 1, an amendment to the Geneva Convention that essentially gives terrorists (that is, non-uniformed, non-state combattants) the status of military prisoners of war. This has been opposed by every President from Reagan onwards, although it’s long been a favorite cause of the left.
If this is the case, these people would then become POWs with all the according protections and privileges, and this would affect their trial, too.
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