The U.S. government has just received the ultimate put-down from one of its Guantanamo prisoners. Arkin Mahmud, a Chinese Uighur who has been held at the prison camp for 8 years, stated ruefully, “In China, at least I would have a trial and sentence.”
What bigger insult than to be accused of providing less justice than that provided by one of the most vicious and brutal communist regimes in the world?
Meanwhile, a man named Najibullah Zazi is being arraigned in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn on the charge of conspiring to commit terrorism by using weapons of mass destruction.
Separately, two other men, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi and Michael C. Fenton, are being charged in federal court with a terrorist attempt to blow up a building in Dallas.
So, what’s going on here? How can Arkin Mahmud accuse the U.S. government of maintaining a justice system that is worse than that which exists in China while, at the same time, suspected terrorists are being charged in federal court and accorded due process and a trial?
The answer lies in the hijacking of America’s criminal-justice system by the president and Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks, a hijacking that has brought nothing but shame and scorn upon our nation. The hijacking entailed the establishment of a new-fangled “judicial” system that enabled the Pentagon to circumvent the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rights and guarantees provided in those documents to people accused of crimes.
We begin with the fundamental principle for which the United States has stood since the inception of our nation: People who are accused of crimes by the federal government are entitled to certain procedural protections, whose origins stretch back centuries into English jurisprudence. These include such principles as the rights to counsel, trial by jury, due process of law, habeas corpus, bail, speedy trial, and the rights to be free from arbitrary arrest, unreasonable searches and seizures, and cruel and unusual punishments.
Such crimes included the crime of terrorism, a crime that is expressly enumerated in the U.S. Criminal Code. That’s why, for example, Ramzi Yousef, who committed the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, was indicted, convicted, and sentenced in federal district court. The same goes for Zacharias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 hijackers.
In the fear-laden environment of post-9/11, the president and the Pentagon committed one of the biggest power grabs in history. They set up an alternative “judicial” system in Cuba, one that would serve as an alternative to the federal-court system established by the Constitution.
The Pentagon’s system entailed denial of speedy trial, the use of hearsay, the use of evidence acquired by torture, the denial of effective assistance of counsel, the denial of trial by jury, a presumption of guilt, and the use of kangaroo military tribunals whose verdict was to be preordained.
The alternative system would be the federal court system, which would continue to operate under the principles of the Constitution.
Which system is a person accused of terrorism entitled to? The decision is left entirely to federal officials. It is entirely arbitrary and ad hoc. The lucky ones get the federal-court system. The unlucky ones get Gitmo.
Those who claim that the federal courts are not equipped to handle terrorism case are obviously misguided or uninformed because the federal courts are, in fact, handling terrorism cases and have been doing so, both before and after 9/11. Those who make that invalid claim are defending, knowingly or not, a system whereby the feds wield the stand-by power to circumvent the Constitution by seizing anyone they want, including American citizens, incarcerating them for life, subjecting them to torture and abuse, and denying them due process and a fair and speedy trial.
The Gitmo system is the one that Arkin Mahmud, along with his younger brother Bahtiyar, got shunted into. That’s why they’re still in prison eight years later. It’s worth mentioning that in a habeas corpus proceeding, a U.S. district court, finding no valid reason for their incarceration, ordered their release into United States a year ago, an order that the Justice Department continues to resist.
When you were growing up, did you ever think you would see the day where people would be complaining that America’s criminal-justice system was worse than that of the communists? The sooner we rid our nation of the shameful “judicial” scourge being operated by the feds at Guantanamo, the better off we Americans will be.
