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On January 19, New York Times writer Charlie Savage headlined, "US Prepares to Lift Ban on Guantanamo Cases," saying:
"The Obama administration (will) increase the use of military commissions to prosecute Guantanamo detainees....Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is expected to soon lift an order blocking the initiation of new cases....(It will) clear the way for tribunal officials, for the first time under the Obama administration, to initiate new charges against detainees" no matter how lawless the process or lack of evidence. Military commissions are convened to convict, not exonerate, denying every trial victim justice.
Last May, Obama authorized 13 prosecutions when his January 20 Executive Order (EO) halted initiation of new ones.
Within weeks, so-called "high-value detainees" will face trial, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 USS Cole bombing, charged with "organizing and directing" it. After capture in 2002, he was brutally tortured. The Bush administration admitted he was waterboarded, faced mock executions, and threatened with a power drill, among other abuses, to extract confessions to the Cole attack, other incidents, and that bin Laden had access to nuclear weapons.
In 2003, two of his alleged co-conspirators were indicted in federal court. Al-Nashiri's lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Stephen Reyes, said he's "being prosecuted at the commissions because of the torture issue," preventing a civilian trial. However, other torture victims got them, including Aafia Siddiqui, Jose Padilla, John Walker Lindh, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.
In alleged terrorism cases, civilian courts usually are as unjust as military commissions. Exceptions, however, occur, Ghailani for one.
An alleged Al Qaeda member, he was charged for involvement in the 1998 attacks on US embassies in East Africa, placed on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list, captured in 2004, sent to Guantanamo, then tried in US District Court for the Southern District of New York in June 2009, the first former Guantanamo detainee tried in a civilian court.
On November 17, 2010, he was convicted on one count of conspiracy, but acquitted on 284 others, including multiple murder charges. On January 20, New York Times writer Benjamin Weiser headlined, "Judge Suggests Evidence in Terror Case Supports Conviction," saying:
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