If my addressing an issue has no relevance to my role as Mr. al-Baluchi's attorney, then I will not address it. I have seen no evidence of who committed the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, other than Mr. al-Baluchi's admissions to me, which I have no reason to doubt. If you have an opinion about who perpetrated the attacks, you should voice it, but make it clear that that opinion is yours, not mine.
TP: If our justice system is being "perverted", and there is no international court to appeal to, then what do you think lawyers should do, legally, to stop this?
SF: I don't think that there will be any lawyers who will need to do anything for the detainees. It is unlikely that these detainees will permit any appointed lawyers to help them. Furthermore, the detainees already know what to do. They don't need my advice to accomplish their goals.
TP: What are the detainees going to do, and what are their goals?
SF: I don't know what they are going to do. I do know what they should do. Their goals are to win, and they will, although to win, they will have to lose, but they understand that.
TP: I still do not understand why so many lawyers are marching in lockstep with the government to orchestrate these show trials, convict, and kill these men. You've called them "compliant". You've stated that the "defenses are limited and the attorneys hand-picked".
Yet you've made it clear that they are not incompetent or corrupt. So what are they? What criteria is being used to hand-pick these defense attorneys?
Why are so many lawyers and judges acquiescing to this?
SF: The lawyers are acquiescing in order to maintain access to the detainees and to be part of trials that will garner international attention. They simply want their names in the papers. In addition, some of them have secured funding for their efforts, which means they have a financial interest in ensuring their continued access. The lawyers affiliated with the ACLU's John Adams Project are a perfect example of this. Those lawyers have used the ACLU's funds to pay themselves to litigate for the purpose of having the detainees' selected counsel removed from the cases. I can't imagine that those who donate to the ACLU had that in mind when they made their donations.
The lawyers will put up a good show, go through the motions, quite literally in this case, and give a good appearance of adequate process. You will see a certain demographic consistency among both the lawyers and judges in these cases, and this demographic consistency will be designed to ensure that the detainees' ability to articulate their concerns with American foreign policy is limited, particularly any hint that America's support for Israel should be rethought.
The lawyers and judges are acquiescing for the same reason that the lawyers and judges who were tried at Nuremburg acquiesced in Nazi Germany's atrocities. Read the play "Judgment at Nuremburg," which is a very powerful indictment of the German legal profession's behavior during the reign of the Third Reich. The lawyers and judges are just doing their jobs, which was the defense they used at Nuremburg; without success I might add.
TP: What "demographic consistency" are you referring to?
SF: I think you
will find, if you continue to follow these cases as they wind their
way through the Federal court system, that practitioners of Judaism
will be robustly represented among the judges to whom the cases are
assigned, and the defense attorneys who are selected by the
government to represent the defendants.
To be continued ...
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