Time for terror trials to start

The Obama administration has finally decided to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four accomplices in a military tribunal rather than a civilian trial in New York City.

But it was a decision made under duress.

Attorney General Eric Holder still insists that a civilian trial would have been the better venue, but his hand was forced by congressional action that barred Guantanamo Bay detainees from being brought into the United States.

Good for Congress. They speak for everyday Americans much more so than either the president or his appointees, and they understood the complications inherent in creating a brand new terror target in New York City.

 Now let’s get this show on the road. The families of 9/11 victims have been waiting for justice for a decade, and sure enough, the detainees also deserve adjudication rather than lingering without trial.

But they don’t deserve a civil trial with the silver platter of rights and privileges that belong to American citizens. There is a fundamental distinction — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts are accused of war crimes, not conventional criminal activity. They conspired to attack the United States and to kill American citizens as part of a war effort rather than a police action — and they were captured on foreign soil as an outgrowth of that war.

There are many other reasons they don’t deserve conventional trials, starting with the fact that our judicial system was never designed or intended to prosecute enemy combatants. These combatants should not be entitled to “discovery” of national security intelligence that is being used against their cohorts around the world.

They should not have access to a media circus that would surely be watched closely by Islamist extremists around the world. To take it a step further, such a show trial just might turn into a terrorist recruiting spectacle.

High-profile American trials tend to be drawn out and involve unconventional security measures. They can also go awry with the standard of reasonable doubt (remember the O.J. Simpson trial?), possibly leading to lengthy appeals and even more media glare.

It’s no wonder most New Yorkers wanted nothing to do with a terror trial in their city. These combatants deserve basic due process through military tribunals, and nothing more.