A Victory For The Courts

The  on yesterday’s major terrorism conviction:

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, former al-Qaeda spokesperson and Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, was found guilty of three counts: conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and providing support to terrorists. The jury returned its unanimous verdict fairly quickly, on the morning of the second day of deliberation. Mr Abu Ghaith was the most prominent member of al-Qaeda to be tried in a civilian court.

Adam Serwer feels vindicated. He notes that “Ghaith, who was captured in Turkey in February 2013, was charged, tried and convicted in about a third of the time it’s taken for the trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators to even get started”:

It’s been three years since charges were sworn against Mohammed and his co-defendants, Abu Gaith, an actual Al Qaeda preacher, was convicted in about a year, and somehow without creating “a whole new generation of terrorists.”

Although Republicans did criticize the decision to try Abu Gaith in civilian court – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Abu Gaith was “an enemy combatant and should be held in military custody” – the reaction to the trial in New York has been muted compared to the frenzied hysterics of 2010 and 2011. Media coverage of the trial has drawn scant attention. An accused terrorist received a fair trial, and somehow New York City managed to survive. There was no need to abandon the very Constitution public officials are sworn to protect.

Amy Davidson also contrasts this case with that of KSM and his co-conspirators:

Back in 2009, Holder announced that those 9/11 defendants would be tried in the same lower Manhattan courthouse where Abu Ghaith was convicted, but there were loud complaints from all sorts of parties, from Congressional Republicans to Mayor Bloomberg. (It is one of the small shames of my native city that some people objected because a trial would tie up traffic.) The Obama Administration backed down, opting to keep K.S.M. at Guantánamo and make use of a military commission there. That was five years ago; the stop-and-start pretrial hearings for his tribunal since have been so disjointed that, at times, they verge on the absurd. …

Abu Ghaith’s conviction may end “the political debate,” but when the military trial of K.S.M. finally begins – maybe next year – we’re still likely going to have to sit through a farce where the great Al Qaeda courtroom drama should have been. Abu Ghaith’s successful trial does prove something, but it’s something we ought to have already known: putting on a trial is not actually that hard when you have a justice system that is a couple hundred years old and rich in precedent, with hundreds of terrorism trials behind it.