Friday, March 16, 2007

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

So where do I start...

An editorial starts...

The extravagant confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief organiser of the September 2001 attacks against the US, should be treated with a pinch of salt. First, it is unclear to what extent it was influenced by the torture (or in Dick Cheney-speak "harsh interrogation") to which he was subjected by the CIA after his capture in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003. Second, as the independent 9/11 Commission report noted almost three years ago, Mohammed saw himself as "a self-cast star, the super-terrorist" of al-Qa'ida.

The news story includes...

In all, according to the transcript - impossible to confirm because both the media and lawyers were refused entry to the hearing - Mohammed took responsibility for 31 attacks and plots around the world.

My newspaper prints a transcript which makes interesting reading but a fuller transcript is available on wikisource . There is no need for me to copy and paste the transcript here.

What should the public believe? What is the truth? Why the secrecy?

All I can draw from this saga is a sense of injustice. There should be no secrecy, everything should be out in the open. The lawyers and the media should be given full and free access. Any trial should be a civil trial before jurors. Inmates at Guantanamo Bay should be charged or released. Information gained under torture apart from being immoral is unreliable. Victims of torture will say anything just to get the torture to stop. If his outlook within a justice system was grim then he may as well claim a distinguished career with all possible terrorist events and plans creditted to him. He clearly told his interrogators what they wanted to hear whether it was true or not. Terrorist plans could be just fantasy and this obscence tribunal has given them free publicity. The value of the transcripts is the same as fairy tales, useful to entertain children.

I think America will just talk this tribunal up to further it's war on terror. I do not think that America will take any notice of his claims that innocent men are in Guantanamo Bay and they should be released.

America does not like it's failings out in the open, as the Oxford coroner has demonstrated.

The world will not be a safer place because of these 2 tales of America's failings in delivering justice in this world.
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