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Originally Posted by Slava
I think that if the case is iron-clad against all of those held in Gitmo than they should try them in public and let everyone see the evidence.
I've always been confused by the Khadr case though. He is charged with throwing a grenade during a fire-fight, right? How can he be put on trial for this....isn't it an expectation of war that this is going to happen? How can they really try a guy in this situation? (just wondering, honestly. Not defending Khadr or his family).
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It's part of the legal argument of the Bush administration, where they feel they get to have it both ways: that is, they can participate in a war on foreign soil, and then combatants in that war captured on the battlefield are not "prisoners of war" but illegal combatants. Gradually, the U.S. courts are stepping in and saying that this logic is specious, and requiring the U.S. to at least offer some kind of due process to these guys.
But it's a complicated problem. This guy is a Canadian national, and pretty clearly meets the definition of "radicalized." Clearly, just letting him go is a terrible option. On the other hand, is there a strong case against him in a real court of law? The Bush administration, to their credit, recognized early that trying these detainees in open court was very risky--they risked first of all that important classified information would become public (or at least compromised) because defendants in a court of law have a right to access the evidence being used against them, and secondly that they stood a good chance of losing many of these cases, undermining their credibility abroad and perhaps being forced to release people they know to be dangerous. (Some of the detainees are probably genuinely innocent--but for argument's sake, let's assume we're talking about real, bona fide bad guys here)
I guess in the end, due process is one of those Western Values worth making sacrifices for. If we truly believe that radical Islam "hates us for our freedom," then that freedom should be the cardinal principle that we never compromise, including things like a just legal system with a presumption of innocence and so forth. But there's no point pretending that there isn't a potential cost here--some of these guys are very, very dangerous people. Khadr may well be one of them.