Apparently the news media last week jumped the gun by announcing the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9-11 terrorism suspects would not be tried in federal court in Manhattan. President Barack Obama said during an interview televised on CBS News on Sunday that he had not ruled out holding the trials in New York City, but he acknowledged that there are logistical issues and local opposition that makes such a high profile court proceeding difficult.

Jim sent this in:

Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute murderous, fanatical terrorists — including the 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — speaks volumes about his ignorance of a major problem with protecting witnesses, members of a jury, and others involved in a terrorism or organized crime case.

Many police officers and prosecutors have become increasingly frustrated by their inability to investigate and prosecute cases successfully when key witnesses refuse to provide critical evidence or to testify because they fear retaliation by the defendant or his family and friends. They’ve also found it difficult to protect jurors or their families.

This problem is particularly acute, and apparently increasing, in gang, terrorism, and drug-related criminal cases. Witnesses’ refusal to cooperate with investigators and prosecutors should be a major concern: it adversely affects the justice system’s functioning while simultaneously eroding public confidence in the government’s ability to protect citizens.

A number of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors’ offices across the country have already taken steps to prevent witness intimidation and jury tampering. These include increased use of traditional witness security measures such as routinely requesting high bail for known intimidators, aggressively prosecuting reported intimidation, closely managing key witnesses, expanding victim/witness assistance services, and sequestering jury members at an undisclosed location..

Several jurisdictions have also adopted innovative approaches, such as emergency and short-term relocation of witnesses (sometimes in collaboration with local public housing authorities), methods to prevent intimidation in the courthouse and jails, and outreach programs to reduce community-wide fear and intimidation.

Most innovative witness security programs include provisions for relocating genuinely endangered witnesses, and most of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers interviewed report that confidential witness relocation is the core protection service that all programs need to provide. Respondents identified three levels of relocation:

• emergency relocation — placing the witness and his or her family in a hotel or motel for up to a few weeks;
• short-term or temporary relocation — using a hotel or motel for up to a year or placing the witness with out-of-town relatives or friends
• permanent relocation — moving the witness between public housing facilities or providing a one-time grant to reestablish the witness in new private housing.

Because most relocations involve witnesses living in public housing, prosecutors and police investigators have implemented a variety of approaches to working with local housing authorities to arrange the necessary transfers.

Gang members and associates of defendants often appear in court in order to frighten witnesses into not testifying. Since the threat may be very subtle and because judges often feel that the constitutional requirement of a public trial prevents them from removing such individuals from the courtroom, it is often difficult to stop this kind of intimidation. Nevertheless, a number of judges have taken steps to remove gang members from the courtroom, to segregate gang members and other intimidating spectators, or to close the courtroom entirely to spectators.

Incarcerated witnesses who are targets for intimidation in gang-and drug-related cases require special protection, including separation from the defendant within the same correctional facility or transfer to a nearby correctional facility, and separate transportation to court to testify.

An atmosphere of community-wide intimidation, even when there is no explicit threat against a particular person, can also discourage witnesses from testifying. Prosecutors and police investigators try to reduce community-wide intimidation through community-based policing and prosecution strategies.

Whenever possible, jurisdictions can combine the range of witness protection approaches discussed above into a coordinated, comprehensive, and formal witness security program.

Prosecutors and police investigators recommend that a witness security program be structured carefully in order to maximize the use of shared resources, reduce prosecutor and police investigator involvement with time-consuming witness management tasks, and minimize civil liability of the prosecutor’s office and police department.

To achieve these goals, a comprehensive witness security model includes an organizing committee, an operational team, a program administrator, and case investigators. Formal interagency cooperation among the groups involved in protecting witnesses is essential to achieving these goals.

Prosecutors often have statutory authority to prevent intimidation through techniques ranging from requesting the exclusion of gang members from the courtroom to impeaching the prosecution’s own witnesses if they change their testimony between deposition or preliminary hearing and trial.

To avoid liability for the safety or misconduct of witnesses participating in witness security programs, experts strongly advise that no promises be made to witnesses unless they can be kept and that any promises that are made be cleared first with whoever has authority to comply with the promises.

Dan Lungren (R-CA) this morning gave the following remarks about the Administration’s decision to bring terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three other suspects to New York to stand trial for the 9/11 terrorist attack that killed 2900 + American civilians in 2001:

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, can anything top this last week’s lesson in absurdity and perversity? I’m talking about the administration’s decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three other terrorist suspects from Guantanamo to New York.

“Absurd because they have been charged before a military tribunal where they ought to be. Absurd because it serves no purpose to bring them to the site of their worst action, just a stone’s throw from ground zero.

“Perverse because now if you kill Americans on the battlefield, you will see justice done when you are captured by a military tribunal, but if instead of being a soldier on the battlefield you attack Americans in their own home, you attack innocent Americans, you will now be privileged to get constitutional rights.

“The worst the terrorist, the greater the constitutional rights given to them – what a perverse action by this administration.”

Jim sent this in:

President Barack Obama believes his office should generate, what he considers, positive messages to the international community.

For example, one reason his Justice Department will try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Islamic terrorists in New York City is to show the international community that the US believes in providing even the most vicious individuals a fair trial, even if they did kill 3,000 people.

However, Attorney General Eric Holder’s move to transfer jurisdiction from the military to the civil criminal justice system sends another message: military courts are good enough for America’s protectors, but they’re not good enough for mass-murdering terrorists.

President Obama has always shown a soft spot in his heart for the Islamic religion. During his presidential campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama told a Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent something that should have alerted every one of the tens of millions of Christians in the United States.

Obama told CBN’s David Brody: “I think that the [political] right might worry a bit more about the dangers of sectarianism. Whatever we once were, we’re no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.”

If that tidbit of information wasn’t enough to question Obama’s vision for America, he previously said in a 2007 speech that “whatever we once were, we’re no longer a Christian nation.”

It’s safe to assume that Obama included Jews out of a desire to drive a wedge between them and conservative Christians. However, only a fool would buy his rhetoric since the President has shown he’s no friend to Israel, while conservative Christians have supported the Jewish state — in both word and deed — against its enemies.

Then he uttered his zinger: “Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked. Part of it’s because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who’ve been all too eager to exploit what divides us.”

While Obama professes to be a Christian, Americans learned his pastor and religious mentor was an America-bashing racist who found a “trusted friend” in the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan, a man known for his unbridled bigotry against Jews and white Christians. Of course, being the political animal he is, Obama eventually distanced himself from his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

According to a news story in World Net Daily, Obama’s comment about the “Christian Right” was mild compared to statements made by his national campaign co-manager, Merrill A. McPeak.

McPeak seemed to compare evangelical Christians to the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah. He told the newspaper The Oregonian that Hamas and Hezbollah were similar to Oregonian Christians whom he labeled radicals.

Once safely entrenched in the Oval Office, President Obama decided to show his true stance on Christianity. He did away with the annual National Day of Prayer on which the White House traditionally hosted a service in its East Room. When a reporter asked Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs about Obama’s decision, Gibbs replied, “Prayer is something that the president does everyday.”  Then Gibbs promised that Obama would sign a proclamation to recognize the day, as many administrations in the past have done.

While President George W. Bush marked the National Day of Prayer with a service at the White House for each of the eight years he served, this year, President Obama decided against holding a public ceremony.

However, in the midst of a war against radical Islam and his push to takeover health care, President Obama found time to hold a White House dinner honoring the Muslim holiday of Ramadan Kareem. And the guest list did not only include Muslims. Many Washington elites attended the ceremony including some Republicans such as Senator Richard Lugar.

But there’s more. They held a national prayer gathering of Muslims on September 25 in front of the US Capitol Building. According to one source, there were at least 50,000 attendees from Mosques all across America. They said that they wanted Americans to see how they pray.

The planners of the event even set up a web site: http://islamoncapitolhill.com

It’s a shame that the Obama White House ignored the National Day of Prayer and instead issued a paper proclamation, meanwhile he had a White House Celebration for a Muslim holiday. Most Americans have no problem with the Muslim holiday but they do have a problem when it is celebrated in lieu of the National Day of Prayer. With Obama ramming Ramadan down the throats of Americans, it’s hoped Americans will finally realize that their leaders use faith as a political prop.

Jim sent this in:

The de facto superstar of ruthless and deadly terrorism, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is expected to be transferred from his Guantanamo Bay cell to New York City to stand trial in civilian court, according to a report submitted today to the Terrorism Committee of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.

A top al-Qaeda leader, Khalid was captured in 2003 while in Pakistan. He admitted during a military hearing last December that he intends to plead guilty to all criminal charges. While Khalid openly admits his guilt in planning the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, some security experts are concerned that his attorneys will capitalize on allegations of torture.

“Thanks to groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, intelligence memos were released earlier in 2009 that indicated aggressive interrorgation techniques were used on Kahalid — including the controversial “water-boarding” — which resulted in obtaining valuable intelligence regarding al-Qaeda activities and personnel,” said former NYPD detective and US Marine intelligence officer Sid Franes. 

Some legal experts believe the use of such methods may cause a judge to rule Khalid’s admissions and statements as inadmissible during a jury trial.

US Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce that five terrorist suspects, including Khalid, will be transported from the controversial Guantanamo detention center in Cuba to stand trial in federal court. Other terrorism suspects may also be brought to the US for civilian adjudication rather than military justice process created especially for these “enemy combatants.”

President Barack Obama, while in Japan on Friday, claimed that Khalid would face “most exacting demands of justice.”  

When reporters pressed Obama for information on the Khalid transfer, the President stated he did not wish to “pre-empt Mr Holder’s announcement.”

But he did state: “I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it. My administration will insist on it.”

Known to intelligence, military and law enforcement officers as a “high priority catch,” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been described by Washington insiders as “one of history’s most infamous terrorists.”

The other men expected to be transferred along with Khalid have yet to be identified, but they are believed to part of the terrorist cell that helped plane the 9-11 attacks that killed about 3,000 people.