Al-Qaeda Civilian Trial In New York With ‘Convention’ Of Convicted Terrorists ‘Has Attracted So Little Attention’

In 2009, the Obama administration announced that it would try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) and 4 other co-conspirators in civilian courts in New York City, but the right wing and obstructionists in Congress launched a fearmongering campaign to prevent this from happening. “There is not going to be a trial in New York, I guarantee it,” then House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said at the time. “There is no appetite for the trials in Congress.” Attorney General Eric Holder eventually acquiesced to the pressure and sent the case back to the Pentagon. A military commission trial is set for Guantanamo Bay next month.

But a high-profile terrorism trial is currently taking place in Brooklyn without much fanfare. Authorities arrested three men in 2009 and 2010 accused of plotting to blow up targets on the New York City subway system. While two of the suspects have already pleaded guilty, the trial of the third, Adis Medunjanin, who was arrested in January 2010, began last week. This time though, the right-wing isn’t saying much, NPR reports:

“It’s rather ironic that this case has attracted so little attention,” says Matthew Waxman, a law professor at Columbia University who used to work on detainee affairs for the Bush administration. “This trial has been an occasion for a convention of terrorism suspects.” [...]

What makes the Brooklyn trial of Medunjanin particularly unusual, Waxman of Columbia University says, is the sheer number of convicted terrorists who have shown up in court. He says the testimony, and the way the trial is unfolding, is proof that the criminal justice system can handle terrorism cases — and tough cases with classified material don’t need to be sent to military commissions at Guantanamo.

“In the past, the idea of prosecuting terrorists here in New York has generated huge outcry,” he says. “But this high-profile trial is going on right here.”

Listen to the full NPR report here:

Indeed, the New York Times reported last week that federal officials said the plot was “one of the most serious threats to the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks.”

British citizen Saajid Badat, who was convicted in the U.K. in 2005 of plotting to blow up an airplane, and another admitted terrorist, American Bryant Neal Vinas, who fought alongside al-Qaeda against U.S. troops in Afghanistan, testified in Medunjanin’s trial yesterday about al-Qaeda’s operational details. Badat, who was supposed to be the second airline shoe-bomber after Richard Reid but backed out, said that Osama bin Laden told him “that the American economy is like a chain. If you break one link of the chain, the whole economy will be brought down.”

Badat made the decision in prison to cooperate with authorities against al-Qaeda and “his help has been invaluable in breaking up plots and understanding al-Qaida as an organization.” The former terrorist said on Monday that he wants to testify in the military commission trial set to begin next month and specifically against KSM because he came to believe that he “was manipulating Muslims into doing things they shouldn’t be doing.”

The families of 9/11 victims and even a number of Bush administration Justice Department officials supported trying terrorists in civilian courts. And as CAP’s Ken Gude has previously noted, “presidents of both parties have relied on criminal courts for decades because they are extremely effective at convicting suspected terrorists and have an excellent record of producing reliable and actionable intelligence information.”