Guantanamo detainee: New York trial

Did the people of New York know he was being transfered to their state ? I bet not, Don't bring these scum to U.S. soil, so they can further pollute the prisons with their twisted veiws of America.

It will only take one liberal Democrat with sympathy towards this guy and he walks free. Over the past few years...the way liberals are proud to show their hatred of their own country...it's been hard to determine what side they support????? My guess is.....the guy walks free! After all, it was that evil, wicked Bush Administration that put this guy in Guantanamo!! And they didn't even let him call his mommy!!!

What a huge waste of taxpayers $$

I'm starting to flip on the issue of having terrorists jailed in the US. One walk through GP on the way to their cell and they'd beg to sit in a cubicle by themselves indefinitely rather than being welcomed by the masses. Gitmo at least has them housed among their compatriots. A US supermax is about the most dangerous place in the world for them.

How dare they bring a foreign-born murderer to a beautiful NY prison full of -- murderers, rapists, child molesters, kidnappers, gangbangers and other thugs who were born in the good ole USA? There goes the neighborhood...

Sorry wingnuts. Your Beloved GWB -- whose farts smell of roses in bloom -- created this mess and we, as a country, have to clean it up. Grow up and deal with it.

This is a subject where the right-wing whackadoos just absolutely crack me up.

On the one hand they're a bunch of tough guy kill-em-all-let-god-sort-it-out types. On the other they wet themselves at the prospect that U.S. prisons/jails aren't secure enough for the 5'3" miscreants.

What a bunch of sniff, sniff, wah, wahs.

Not sure why this upsets people! Aren't the prisons built to house criminals? Don't think terrorists have super human powers that require extra attention! They'll be locked up with some of the meaniest people on the planet...what's the harm!

Joe,

Just because liberals don't see things the conservative way doesn't mean they hate America. Why are you so idiotic? They need to close Gitmo. Bringing them over here and putting them in max security prisons is no big deal. There are many people way worse already in these prisons who could do much more harm then these guys.

AEM: I don’t think there is any serious danger of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani polluting our prisons with his “twisted views of America.” It’s unlikely that he can speak English or that many prisoners can speak Swahili.
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Joe: Unless you are referring to a judge, it will take 12 people to set this guy free. It takes 12 jurors to acquit. Less than a unanimous verdict ends in a hung jury in the federal system. That means a re-trial. A judge could only cut him loose for a statutory or constitutional violation that either ousts the court of jurisdiction or results in the suppression of needed government evidence. Even then, a dismissal on such grounds is an appealable order unless it is made after jeopardy has attached.
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a blinkin: Don’t write stuff like that and then tell other people to grow up. You have some issues yourself if you thing that Duh’bya is the root cause of all our troubles. I mean, seriously, this guy Ghailani is going on trial for murder in connection with the bombings of the American Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Those bombings took place when Clinton was president. How can you possibly blame Bush for this one?

I believe we are going down a road that is going to lead to disaster. The prisoners at Gitmo are treated better than they have a right to be. Keep the facility open. Their better off there than they are on U.S. soil. Of course once they get a taste of our local prisons, they'll probably wish they were back at Gitmo. These scum bags should not have the same rights as American citizens. They should be treated as prisoners of war, and when the war is over then there should be military trials. In the mean time were a lot safer in the country. Last but not least,all you do gooders out there that want to make nicey nice to these people need to come to grips with the fact that these same people would murder your kids, rape your wives or cut your husbands heads off, st the blink of an eye.

Joe,

Just because liberals don't see things the conservative way doesn't mean they hate America. Why are you so idiotic? They need to close Gitmo. Bringing them over here and putting them in max security prisons is no big deal. There are many people way worse already in these prisons who could do much more harm then these guys.

Posted by: MR FACE | June 9, 2009 12:40 PM

Well...sorry, you are wrong! Liberals do hate America...otherwise they would be conservatives. Have you been on a college campus lately? This generation of college graduates have been brainwashed by their professors to believe that capitalism and America are the causes of all problems in this world...even the current idiot who is sitting in the White House believes this nonsense!!!!

John W.:

Don't be obtuse. I blame Bush for creating GITMO -- or was that Clinton's fault too? I don't blame Bush for creating this particular ("alleged") murderer. I blame him for throwing him into a cage with no idea what to do next.

GITMO is the mess that the country needs to clean up. Anyone who suggests otherwise indeed needs to grow up.

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Don't kill harsh little Joe's buzz. He knows everything about the justice system that Michael Savage taught him.

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I again repeat what Chris Matthews posited a couple weeks back: why don't we just summarily execute everyone at GITMO? Per wingnut Nancy, that'll sure save $$

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Posted by: a blinkin | June 9, 2009 2:19 PM
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I wasn’t being obtuse. For a guy facing the death penalty for multiple murder charges, a tropical vacation in Club Guantanamo isn’t as bad as the alternatives - unless you happen to like the death penalty. He is still sucking air, which is more than one will be able to say after his execution.
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Furthermore, I wouldn’t quote Chris Matthews and call someone obtuse in the same post. I don’t consider anyone a source of stable insight if listening to Obama giving a speech makes a “thrill go up [his] leg,” as Matthews has admitted. Besides, man-crush Matthews (like many other dead-head pseudo-liberal commentators) has entirely forgotten that the prison camp at Guantanamo wasn’t established only for people who committed war-crimes. It was also established to house people whom, in saner times, we might have called “Prisoners of War,” and whom we deem too dangerous to release. Shooting prisoners of war is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. (This is another reason why we don’t listen to Christ Matthews.) Detaining POW’s for the duration of a war isn’t. Were it not for the allegations of “enhanced interrogation techniques” employed at that facility, Guantanamo might not have suffered as much infamy in the eyes of the world.

John W:

You are of course aware of the previous maladministration's concerted effort to NOT have the GITMO detainees classified as POWs, for the very reason you identified: POWs have rights under the Geneva Conventions and our treatment of the detainees was known to violate those conventions. As a consequence, the detainees are in a legal limbo -- a mess that the country needs to clean up.

Your rather obvious frustration over this whole situation is that as a lawyer and a usually sane conservative, you recognize that having human beings incarcerated with no obvious legal status is a disaster -- one created by a guy that you voted for twice.

This is not about Chris Matthews. This is about the cognitive dissonance that's been tearing you up for 8 years now.

As long as we are calling people "obtuse"...

The problem with closing Gitmo and bringing the prisoners currently residing there stateside is not whether or not the supermax prison of choice here is "tough enough" for them. The problem is that it immediately creates a new target(s) within our own country for their compatriots to then attack in an effort to a) break them out, or b) introduce a hostage situation.

I'm sure some of you will respond with something like "but they could do the same at Gitmo" and yes, you are technically correct. However, it would be far preferable for that situation to happen there than within the U.S. proper (if it were to happen, that is). A U.S. military base on an island is a significantly more daunting target than a prison in downstate IL or elsewhere.

BTW - a blinkin wants to talk about "maladministrations" and "cognitive dissonance?" Really? Get over yourself and your holier than thou positions. Believe me, your guys are certainly no better.

Freddy:

I'm guessing that creating a hostage situation in a supermax prison might be quite a challenge. But even so, maybe someone should have thought of that before placing humans beings in Cuban cages with no idea what to do with them.

How 'bout it, Fredito? Let's just execute everyone at Gitmo. Why not?

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I'm sorry about your cognitive dissonance too. Trouble sleeping? Irritable?

Posted by: Freddy | June 9, 2009 3:56 PM

Yeah Freddy , that's what's going to happen. Right.

Never mind that terrorists have never attacked any of the federal prisons that the 1993 WTC terrorists are in. Never mind that terrorists have never gone after the many Israeli jails which imprison terrorists much closer to their bases. Don't let facts get in the way of your baseless fears.

the department should put an end to this scandal

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Posted by: a blinkin | June 9, 2009 3:31 PM
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The former administration’s efforts consisted of more confusion and incompetence than anything else. It failed in its attempt at having the folks at Guantanamo classified as anything other than POWs. The Supreme Court saw to that. A prisoner of war is a prisoner of war, regardless of the label one attaches. Substance trumps form. So said the U.S. Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), where the lead opinion specifically stated that Hamdi’s claim under the Geneva Conventions failed, not because he wasn’t a POW, but because his indeterminate detention was not inconsistent with being a POW. The former administration’s attempt failed again in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006), where the Court found that trials before the military commissions violated the Geneva Conventions’ provisions related to the treatment of prisoners of war. The decision was based on the explicit ruling that the Geneva Conventions applied to the detainees at Guantanamo. Thus: Guantanamo Detainee == Prisoner of War. Moreover, the last nail was put in the coffin of fuzzy treatment of POWs by the Court’s ruling in Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. ___ (2008), in which the Court recognized the detainees’ constitutional right to habeas corpus to challenge their status as enemy combatants; which is a right that no POW has ever been granted before. Furthermore, separate and apart from access to the courts through habeas proceedings, Congress had also provided an appellate procedure through which the detainees could have challenged their enemy combatant status. This was a procedure, by the way, that NONE of the detainees ever sought to use. In which case, the detainees are not in legal limbo, and never were. As such, Chris Matthews is still wrong in supposing that all detainees have been held there for committing criminal acts.
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As I see it, the former administration’s attempts at twisting the law regarding POWs are on a par with Bush’s attempts at altering the effect and enforcement of laws through signing statements. Both are of no constitutional or legal consequence. Just as the President’s Article II duty to see that the laws are faithfully carried out isn’t altered by a signing statement (which isn’t authorized by the Constitution), the treatment of POWs as something other than POWs wasn’t justified by equally futile machinations. The legal status of the detainees was never in doubt except in the small minds of those who wanted to take license with the circumstances. Now that that’s over, there is no particular reason for believing that Guantanamo is still a “mess” other than, perhaps, for what it symbolizes to some. It’s just a place with bars and banana trees, banana rats, boas, and what few rock iguanas are left in Cuba. It only needs to be something worse if people want to make it worse in their minds.
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“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” - The Wizard of Oz

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Posted by: a blinkin | June 9, 2009 3:31 PM
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P.S.
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You are mistaken in suggesting that I voted for Duh’bya twice. I didn’t. He got my vote in 2000. He then proceeded to infuriate me for reasons you may not understand. My support was at an end after I saw what he was doing. I’m not even a registered Republican any more.
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As for fixing what went wrong, that ship already sailed. Obama has already elected not to prosecute former administration members or intelligence gatherers. We can only hope that present regulations prevent abuses from happening again.
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Freddy: I don’t think a blinkin was attempting to be particularly hostile with regard to his “cognitive dissonance” remark. Furthermore, although I agree with you that the current administration is no model of administrative efficiency or wisdom, I don’t think a blinkin’s comments regarding maladministration during Bush’s administrations is particularly incorrect. Bush did a lot of things wrong. He was not the kind of conservative I wanted to see leading the country.

My concern is, if he's found not guilty (could be on a technicality or something) what happens then? Is he just turned out into the streets? Not guilty means he's free to go in a criminal proceeding. I know I don't want the guy in my neighborhood. Gibbs didn't have an answer when he was asked about it, maybe he can move next door to Robert Gibbs and his family.

Posted by: vla | June 10, 2009 10:37 AM

So, should we just discontinue all criminal trials then? After all some murderer who was really guilty could be found not guilty and released ontio the streets. We wouldn't want to risk having him move in next door, would we vla? So pour only option is to suspend all trials of violent criminals, and to ship them all to Cuba for indefinite detention.

Well, sounds good to me - ship them all to Cuba! Great idea Lou!

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Posted by: vla | June 10, 2009 10:37 AM
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There is nothing to fear. He’s only here to see if we can kill him. If he survives the ordeal and we don’t kill him, we will send him back to whatever dirt road, mud hut village in Tanzania or Kenya he came from.