US President Barack Obama, defending plans to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court, predicted on Wednesday that the accused author of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks would be convicted, and executed.
US Attorney General Eric Holder assured lawmakers that prosecutors know “failure is not an option” and that Sheikh Mohammed would not be freed even if acquitted by a jury in New York, a city still scarred by the 2001 attacks.
Obama, speaking to NBC television during a trip to Asia, said that anger and security worries over the planned civilian trial would fall away “when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.”
In a separate exchange with CNN, Obama, who insisted he was not prejudging the case, scoffed at the idea “that these terrorists possess some special powers that prevent us from presenting evidence against them, locking them up and exacting swift justice.”
The US president also explicitly acknowledged for the first time that he will not meet the Jan. 22 deadline he decreed on his second day in office for closing the prison at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“I’m not disappointed. I knew this was going to be hard,” he told Fox News, adding that he expected a continued political fight over the prison.
“We are on a path and a process where I would anticipate that Guantanamo will be closed next year. I’m not going to set an exact date, because a lot of this was also going to depend on cooperation from Congress,” he said.
Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he hoped the administration hoped to overcome “the biggest problem” by finding destinations this year for detainees cleared for release.
After Obama’s deadline admission, rights group Amnesty International urged Washington to “redouble efforts” to shutter Guantanamo.
“Now, as should have been the case from day one, the government should resolve these detentions by either bringing the detainees to fair trial or immediately releasing them,” said Susan Lee, head of Amnesty’s Americas program.
With angry relatives of some Sept. 11 victims looking on, Holder defended his decision to try Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-plotters in New York.
“Failure is not an option. These are cases that have to be won. I don’t expect that we will have a contrary result,” Holder said. “We need not cower in the face of this enemy.”
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
RSS