Due process foils 9/11 gang's lust for martyrdom

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- It was just as well that the five men held at Guantanamo Bay accused of planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States withdrew their guilty pleas because they could not be certain they would be sentenced to death.

In a move to gain martyrdom, the five, including plot mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad, said they wanted to end the proceedings and be executed. They have been charged with conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism.

U.S. government prosecutors were seeking the death penalty, but the request from the defendants created a legal quandary their attorneys -- who happen to be themselves, for the most part -- did not foresee. The judge in the case rightly raised the issue of whether a defendant can be sentenced to die if he wasn't convicted by a jury. And the defendants withdrew their offer because execution could not be guaranteed. The nihilistic desire of the jihadists for martyrdom was therefore frustrated by the stuffy old, secular Western principle of due process that they so despised.

The failure of the guilty pleas ploy also means the defendants may now face trial in federal courts as U.S. President-elect Barack Obama plans to close the holding facility at Guantanamo Bay and move trials from there to federal courts. Apparently, the defendants believe such a move would give the trials more credibility than the tribunals.

Should the judge have accepted those guilty pleas? Would it have been justice if those men had been allowed to become martyrs among people who think as they do in their hatred of the United States? Would a more just sentence be to stash them in a maximum-security prison for the rest of their lives?

There are strong arguments on both sides. Accepting the pleas, it could be argued, would quickly give the accused the fate they deserve and hopefully bring a sense of closure to many of the families and loved ones of their many victims.

However, it would be a devastating verdict on American justice that seven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, atrocities were carried out, neither the Bush administration nor the U.S. legal system had yet reached a clear decision on how to punish the perpetrators. Even here, with key perpetrators safely captured and held for several years, President George W. Bush ended up handing over the really hard decisions to his successor. And allowing the killers to be put to death when they wanted to die, in effect, on their own terms, would have made a mockery of any principle of just punishment and deterrence.

However, holding a civil trial, as hundreds of future Obama administration Justice Department officials are determined to do, will carry grave risks of its own. The security requirements to protect the judges, attorneys and juries in such trials will be enormous, and the risk of al-Qaida and other Islamist groups stepping up retaliatory terror attacks against U.S. civilians during the trials will be very great. Also, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, certainly should be regarded as war crime atrocities, but they certainly did not fall into the category of any ordinary crime. Their perpetrators regarded their activities as acts of war. It therefore would be far more fitting to try the accused in military courts rather than federal ones, as Obama and his future Justice Department appointees want. Trying the accused in military courts will make the security issues of protecting the courts far easier. The trials will be expedited and be conducted far more quickly, an essential consideration, both from the security point of view and because the final disposition of the cases already has been so long delayed.

Finally, it certainly would be justice to put to death the self-admitted perpetrators of such crimes. And it at least would have the undoubted effect of removing them from the land of the living, where they could not be freed in some future swap for hostages, or escape, allowing them to try to kill again. Amid all the debates over the efficacy of capital punishment, one statistic stands unchallenged: No one who was executed was ever able to kill any innocent victims again.