Maybe if we hadn’t tortured the guy, we could have used the testimony of Hussein Abebe, the guy who sold him the TNT.
Maybe if we’d had a proper military tribunal for a foreign terrorist who admitted to plotting to kill hundreds of Americans, we could have saved the money for this trial, and gotten him put away forever, instead of being almost completely repudiated by a civilian jury.
First, the military tribunals couldn’t use evidence obtained from torture either. Second, twenty years is the minimum sentence – it could be a life sentence.
Twenty year minimum sentence for a single conviction out of 277 counts.
The murder and attempted murder counts would have carried 20+ year sentences each, and I doubt he would have been allowed to serve them concurrently, so Ghalani managed to get 0.36% of the time that he was facing.
Yup, that sounds like a rousing success for Holder… [/sarc]
John B. – what, Ghalani has more than one life? What difference does it make how many life sentences the guy gets? He’ll be in jail for the rest of his life.
Chris, you are entirely missing the point. It was never about outcome. It is about how you deal with enemies. Show trials are for communists.
Enemies in uniform get held until the war is over. Enemies not wearing a uniform get shot.
We have now told the enemy he can do anything he likes against any American. If caught his standard of living with go up. He gets to publicly spew against America in a show trial and become a hero. Then gets to make more recruits in an American prison. Nice job.
Show trials are a religious rite for the Left/Progressives. It allows them to reaffirm and demonstrate their belief in their own moral superiority while providing the justification for then punishing those who sin against Left/Progressive dogma. They have nothing to do with establishing guilt or innocence or the facts, as those were predetermined.
“Sentence first– verdict afterwards.”
They should’ve tried him on my favorite charge: suspicion of intent to conspire.
Even Holder couldn’t lose on that one.
Well…
Technically a “show trial” would involve the judge & jury as participants in the sham.
I’m not sure what this would be called , but it looks like the judge used normal civilian rules of evidence.
It was a bit of a win-win for terrorists, as the article author states.
How is this a “win” for the terrorists? They get tried, convicted and imprisoned like common criminals despite getting the piss beaten out of them at GITMO. Sounds like a bad deal to me.
John B. – what, Ghalani has more than one life? What difference does it make how many life sentences the guy gets? He’ll be in jail for the rest of his life.
The guy is only 35 or 36 right now. He got 20 years. Last I checked, the average human lifespan was a bit longer than 55. It VERY MUCH matters how many convictions and consecutive sentences he gets.
John B. – Wrong! Ghalani has not been sentenced. He will get a minimum of 20 years. There is no reason to think he won’t get life.
I see Gerrib still misses the fact that Holder’s strategy is 1 for 277. Hell, even the Cubs do better at getting into the World Series.
I don’t know why Chris thinks that the sentence is the important issue. It’s not, and has nothing to do with my post. I also don’t know why he repeats the lie that Ghalani was tortured.
John B. – Wrong! Ghalani has not been sentenced. He will get a minimum of 20 years. There is no reason to think he won’t get life.
Oh, I dunno. The fact that he was only convicted of one count out of 280+, and only ONE out of the FIVE conspiracy counts, at that, leads me to believe that the sentencing would not be nearly as harsh as, say, if he had been convicted of 140 out of 280 counts, or maybe even of all 5 counts of conspiracy.
Even if he had been convicted of 3 counts, he’d be facing a minimum of 60 years, which, barring life-extension priveleges, would be effectively a life sentence.
So, while you may sleep perfectly well at night knowing that Ghalani was acquitted of 280+ felonies, I take little comfort in knowing that the worst-case scenario of his sentencing means that he will be out of prison within 20 years (less time served, even).
The judge didn’t say he was tortured. He was coerced. Words mean things.
Rand – if “words mean things” then Holder didn’t “loose a show trial.” He won a real trial, by getting a conviction. If “words mean things” then “physical and psychological abuse” means “torture.”
The facts are not on your side.
If “words mean things” then “physical and psychological abuse” means “torture.”
False. Torture is legally defined. What is unknown is how a jury can convict someone of conspiracy to blow up a building but not to kill anyone in it at the time.
Interesting how Gerrib drops the word allegedly to equate physical and psychological abuse as torture. In Gerrib’s world, US troops definitely tortured. Ghailani however deserves full protection of US civilian innocent until proven guilty, thus it’s right that DOJ can only win 1 count of conspiracy.
Sounds like a bad deal to me.
Yes, so bad he was smiling and hugging his lawyer. Who knows, he might get a book deal out of it.
War changes definitions. Shoot the enemy. If he lives through it, painful as it may be, he has not been tortured… even though physical and mental distress are involved. But you go ahead and define panties on a guys head as torture.
If they fight by the rules of war they get the benefits of doing so because it benefits us and that’s the only reason. Fight without honor as they do and they should expect nothing… we have no obligation to do anything beyond killing them. None of these guys should have any expectation of a legal defense. We are completely within our rights to hold them, release them, or kill them without trial. If they harmed one American, a quick death is an act of mercy. Since I have not forgotten their acts, I’m not in a merciful mood. Eric Holder is an enemy combatant as far as I’m concerned and should be treated as such. This administration is a disgrace.
Well, let’s see. Ghalani will get a minimum of 20 years in prison when U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan sentences him for his conviction on conspiracy charges. In the federal system, there is no parole, so he’ll do at least 20.
Maybe if we hadn’t tortured the guy, we could have used the testimony of Hussein Abebe, the guy who sold him the TNT.
Maybe if we’d had a proper military tribunal for a foreign terrorist who admitted to plotting to kill hundreds of Americans, we could have saved the money for this trial, and gotten him put away forever, instead of being almost completely repudiated by a civilian jury.
First, the military tribunals couldn’t use evidence obtained from torture either. Second, twenty years is the minimum sentence – it could be a life sentence.
Twenty year minimum sentence for a single conviction out of 277 counts.
The murder and attempted murder counts would have carried 20+ year sentences each, and I doubt he would have been allowed to serve them concurrently, so Ghalani managed to get 0.36% of the time that he was facing.
Yup, that sounds like a rousing success for Holder… [/sarc]
John B. – what, Ghalani has more than one life? What difference does it make how many life sentences the guy gets? He’ll be in jail for the rest of his life.
Chris, you are entirely missing the point. It was never about outcome. It is about how you deal with enemies. Show trials are for communists.
Enemies in uniform get held until the war is over. Enemies not wearing a uniform get shot.
We have now told the enemy he can do anything he likes against any American. If caught his standard of living with go up. He gets to publicly spew against America in a show trial and become a hero. Then gets to make more recruits in an American prison. Nice job.
Show trials are a religious rite for the Left/Progressives. It allows them to reaffirm and demonstrate their belief in their own moral superiority while providing the justification for then punishing those who sin against Left/Progressive dogma. They have nothing to do with establishing guilt or innocence or the facts, as those were predetermined.
“Sentence first– verdict afterwards.”
They should’ve tried him on my favorite charge: suspicion of intent to conspire.
Even Holder couldn’t lose on that one.
Well…
Technically a “show trial” would involve the judge & jury as participants in the sham.
I’m not sure what this would be called , but it looks like the judge used normal civilian rules of evidence.
It was a bit of a win-win for terrorists, as the article author states.
How is this a “win” for the terrorists? They get tried, convicted and imprisoned like common criminals despite getting the piss beaten out of them at GITMO. Sounds like a bad deal to me.
John B. – what, Ghalani has more than one life? What difference does it make how many life sentences the guy gets? He’ll be in jail for the rest of his life.
The guy is only 35 or 36 right now. He got 20 years. Last I checked, the average human lifespan was a bit longer than 55. It VERY MUCH matters how many convictions and consecutive sentences he gets.
Lockerbie bomber Megrahi living in luxury villa six months after being at ‘death’s door’
Well, actually over a year now…
John B. – Wrong! Ghalani has not been sentenced. He will get a minimum of 20 years. There is no reason to think he won’t get life.
I see Gerrib still misses the fact that Holder’s strategy is 1 for 277. Hell, even the Cubs do better at getting into the World Series.
I don’t know why Chris thinks that the sentence is the important issue. It’s not, and has nothing to do with my post. I also don’t know why he repeats the lie that Ghalani was tortured.
John B. – Wrong! Ghalani has not been sentenced. He will get a minimum of 20 years. There is no reason to think he won’t get life.
Oh, I dunno. The fact that he was only convicted of one count out of 280+, and only ONE out of the FIVE conspiracy counts, at that, leads me to believe that the sentencing would not be nearly as harsh as, say, if he had been convicted of 140 out of 280 counts, or maybe even of all 5 counts of conspiracy.
Even if he had been convicted of 3 counts, he’d be facing a minimum of 60 years, which, barring life-extension priveleges, would be effectively a life sentence.
So, while you may sleep perfectly well at night knowing that Ghalani was acquitted of 280+ felonies, I take little comfort in knowing that the worst-case scenario of his sentencing means that he will be out of prison within 20 years (less time served, even).
Well, the judge excluded testimony because Ghailani’s right to be free from self-incrimination was violated because the identity and whereabouts of Mr. Abebe were “allegedly extracted by physical and psychological abuse of” Ghailani in a secret CIA prison. So apparently the judge is a liar too.
Holder is actually batting a thousand. He has yet to fail to get a conviction of a terrorist. Hell, the US has convicted 403 people in international terrorism cases since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, while the military tribunals have convicted three (3) people.
The judge didn’t say he was tortured. He was coerced. Words mean things.
Rand – if “words mean things” then Holder didn’t “loose a show trial.” He won a real trial, by getting a conviction. If “words mean things” then “physical and psychological abuse” means “torture.”
The facts are not on your side.
If “words mean things” then “physical and psychological abuse” means “torture.”
False. Torture is legally defined. What is unknown is how a jury can convict someone of conspiracy to blow up a building but not to kill anyone in it at the time.
Interesting how Gerrib drops the word allegedly to equate physical and psychological abuse as torture. In Gerrib’s world, US troops definitely tortured. Ghailani however deserves full protection of US civilian innocent until proven guilty, thus it’s right that DOJ can only win 1 count of conspiracy.
Sounds like a bad deal to me.
Yes, so bad he was smiling and hugging his lawyer. Who knows, he might get a book deal out of it.
War changes definitions. Shoot the enemy. If he lives through it, painful as it may be, he has not been tortured… even though physical and mental distress are involved. But you go ahead and define panties on a guys head as torture.
If they fight by the rules of war they get the benefits of doing so because it benefits us and that’s the only reason. Fight without honor as they do and they should expect nothing… we have no obligation to do anything beyond killing them. None of these guys should have any expectation of a legal defense. We are completely within our rights to hold them, release them, or kill them without trial. If they harmed one American, a quick death is an act of mercy. Since I have not forgotten their acts, I’m not in a merciful mood. Eric Holder is an enemy combatant as far as I’m concerned and should be treated as such. This administration is a disgrace.