Daphne Eviatar has been covering the anti-9/11 trial protests, which Andy McCarthy has been championing. Here, she eviscerates a common talking point:
Curiously, many of those protesting the accused terrorists' trial in federal court repeatedly refer to a federal court trial and its attendant due process rights as being “reserved for U.S. citizens.” At a rally last weekend in New York City, for example, protesters and speakers repeatedly objected that the 9/11 defendants were being given “the same rights as U.S. citizens.”
In fact, the “right” to be prosecuted in a U.S. federal court has never been “reserved” for U.S. citizens at all. It's historically been a “right” accorded to anyone who commits a crime on U.S. soil. Thus everyone from a U.S.-born citizen to an illegal alien who commits a federal crime in the United States gets tried in federal court. Although the government has just recently created special military commissions to try some crimes against U.S. military targets abroad, we don’t normally create new courts or legal systems to try non-citizens who commit mass murder, mail fraud, or any other crimes that might land them in federal court.
Andy McCarthy, former U.S. Attorney, has made this exact argument.
Now, we see the reckoning: Obama’s gratuitous transfer of alien war criminals from a military court, where they were on the verge of ending the proceedings, to the civilian justice system, where they will be given the same rights and privileges as the American citizens they are pledged to kill.
If anything, the fact that someone with McCarthy's understanding of the law was able to convict Zacarias Moussaoui is in and of itself a strong argument that trying terrorists in civilian court isn't a problem.
-- A. Serwer
