Try or release terror suspects
Alvin Bessent is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
The first former Guantánamo Bay detainee to stand trial in a civilian court was sentenced Tuesday to life behind bars. That successful prosecution of embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani should make it easier to resolve the conundrum of what to do with the other detainees still in legal limbo.
But it won't.
That's because what to do with them isn't just a legal question, or even a purely political one. It's a test of values versus fear and, so far, fear is winning.
Congress has made it all but impossible to bring detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the self-described mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks - onto U.S. soil for civilian trials. Still, he and others like him will probably have their day in court - although the "court" may be a military commission.
But that's the easy part. The tougher question is what to do with the 48 men at Guantánamo whom the administration says it will continue to hold without trials of any kind.
Officials say they're too dangerous to let go. And there's apparently too little evidence untainted by abuse to convict them, even under the relaxed rules of military commissions.
This is where our national values should take center stage. The 48 aren't U.S. citizens, but they are in U.S. custody. And the United States isn't supposed to be the kind of country that locks people up without charges or trials and throws away the key. That's what despots do. In America, authorities are supposed to have to make the case, before an impartial judge, that imprisonment is justified and legal.
That's the bedrock of due process and a critical element of our freedom from oppression. It's why President Barack Obama was right to push to put some detainees on trial, and wrong to hold others indefinitely without any recourse.
Nobody relishes giving men we've got on lockdown the opportunity to carry out a new attack. I certainly don't. And let's be real; some of the 48 men we're talking about may try to do just that.
But it's a risk we must be willing to accept. I don't say that cavalierly. I live in Manhattan. My neighborhood was locked down in the first days after 9/11. For months I couldn't open my windows without being assailed by the unforgettable, penetrating odor of the smoldering World Trade Center ruins. If New York is a terrorist target - and it is - then I live in the bull's-eye.
But if we can't put people we've kept locked up for close to a decade on trial and convict them of something, then we have to let them go. Principles can't be observed only when it's easy or safe. Values that are ignored in tough times are no values at all. Situations like this test the strength of our convictions; we should meet the test.
From the moment in 2002 when President George W. Bush made Guantánamo his prison of choice in the war on terror, the idea was to sidestep the nation's legal system. He refused to designate the detainees prisoners of war, a classification that comes with rights under international conventions and domestic law. He allowed secret prisons abroad, kidnapping and torture. And to avoid the due process civilian courts demand, he labeled detainees unlawful enemy combatants and fashioned a separate legal system just for them that was under his control.
Ahmed Ghailani, who claims to have been tortured, was acquitted of more than 280 counts of murder and conspiracy in the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, attacks that took 224 lives. He was convicted of a single count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings. That's not as satisfying as a murder conviction, but it proves we can bring Guan- tánamo detainees to trial. And life in prison is life in prison.
