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- 23/03/10
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Holder: collective administration decision on possible bin Laden trial Jeremy Pelofsky (Front Row Washington) Submitted at 3/22/2010 2:11:18 PM
(UPDATED – adds Tuesday hearing delayed) U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder drew a lot of attention last week when he told Congress that he believed that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would never be captured alive and declined to say how he would be prosecuted if that hypothetical capture actually came to fruition. Holder offered a somewhat clearer answer on Monday to that question ahead of a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Tuesday that is expected to delve deeply into the Obama administration’s policies for prosecuting terrorism suspects. (The hearing was postponed until April 14
because many lawmakers plan to attend the healthcare bill signing.) “If Osama bin Laden were captured, a decision as to how to proceed would be made at that time in consultation with the President’s full national security team,” Holder said in written responses released on Monday to questions submitted for the record by the committee after its last oversight hearing in November. The attorney general has been harshly criticized by Republicans and even some Democrats for deciding to prosecute in criminal court the five alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, including selfproclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Some have argued that they should be tried in a special military court to avoid giving
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the suspects full U.S. legal rights or a potential platform for their anti-American views. Some in Congress are trying to block funding for trials in traditional criminal courts. The White House has had to intervene and is now
reconsidering Holder’s decision, though officials have defended the criminal courts as a tested means for such prosecutions. Last week Holder was asked about what would happen if U.S. forces captured bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in the rugged mountainous border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. “The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom,” Holder told a House Appropriations subcommittee. He later characterized the chances of bin Laden being captured alive as “infinitesimal,” arguing he will be killed either by U.S. forces or by his own people to ensure he was not captured. The next day, the top U.S. and NATO commander in
Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, held out the possibility that bin Laden would be captured. “We certainly would go after trying to capture him alive and bring him to justice. I think that is something that is understood by everyone,” he told reporters. In Holder’s responses to lawmakers’ questions, he also defended the decision to use the criminal courts for terrorism trials as a tried and tested venue. Additionally he said that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force would permit the Obama administration to hold terrorism suspects without trial if they somehow were not found guilty. - Photo credit: Reuters/ (1998 file photo of bin Laden)