Human Rights - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (America, mission, Zen)

[michel]

http://www.humanrights.org/

The man known as the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, claimed responsibility this month for planning those attacks and a number of other serious crimes against U.S. citizens and people in other countries. And yet his assertion that he was tortured by U.S. interrogators taints the proceedings designed to bring him to justice for those crimes.Put it another way: No matter how heinous the crimes alleged, no person should be tried on secret evidence obtained by cruel and inhuman treatment. But the military commissions set up to try people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed permit just that.

Fair trials and respect for the rule of law — even for those accused of the worst crimes — are bedrock principles on which the United States was founded. Americans at Nuremberg recognized the importance of resisting the temptation to deviate from those time-honored principles, even when trying the enemies of mankind. As Justice Robert Jackson remarked: "To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well." It’s a caution that Congress would do well to take seriously, and one that Human Rights First will continue to sound, as the next story illustrates.]
Maureen Byrnes