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.”
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