By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON, April 10 (Reuters) – When the Obama
administration declared it wanted to put suspects involved in
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on trial in a New York federal
courtroom, cries of outrage erupted in the U.S. Congress.
Both Democrats and Republicans worried this would put New
York City in the crosshairs for new al Qaeda attacks. Congress
eventually passed a law forbidding the administration from
trying alleged Sept. 11 conspirators, or any other militants
detained at the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, in
U.S. civilian courts.
But when it comes to the cases of five alleged top militants
whose extradition from Britain to the United States a European
human rights court approved on Tuesday, the White House will
have no choice.
British and U.S. officials said the Obama administration had
given ironclad assurances to Prime Minister David Cameron’s
government that the five militants would be tried in the U.S.
federal court system, and they would not face a potential
sentence of capital punishment.
Three of the five to whom the European court ruling on
Tuesday applied – Abu Hamza, Khalid al Fawwaz and Adel Bary –
have all been under indictment for years in the U.S. Southern
District of New York.
Law enforcement officials said that prosecutors, whose
courtrooms are only blocks from the site of the World Trade
Center towers downed in 2011, are prepared to try the cases if
the suspects finally are extradited from Britain.
The officials noted that several notorious militants,
including Ramzi Yousef, alleged mastermind of the 1993 World
Trade Center bombing, were prosecuted and convicted in the same
courts and are now serving lengthy U.S. prison terms.
Some are being held in ultra-secure “Supermax” prisons where
the European court said U.S. authorities might be entitled to
jail the five extradition subjects if they are convicted.
But for political, as well as other reasons, civilian trials
for alleged militants lately have been the exception rather than
the rule in high-profile counter-terrorism cases.
Tuesday’s European court action appears unlikely to
permanently change that – or alter President Barack Obama’s
preferred approach in fighting militants, which centers on
clandestine operations and lethal drone strikes.
Indeed, just last week, the Pentagon announced that the
accused Sept. 11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and a
handful suspected co-conspirators will be tried before a U.S.
military tribunal at Guantanamo, and could face the death
penalty.
1998 U.S. EMBASSY BOMBINGS
The extradition cases demonstrate how what President George
W. Bush once called the “global war on terrorism” has evolved in
the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In fact, the cases of all the men whose extraditions the
European court approved have their roots in events that took
place before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Two of them, Fawwaz, a Saudi citizen, and Bary, an Egyptian,
face charges in connection with 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies
in Tanzania and Kenya, a case which also included the first U.S.
criminal charges against Osama bin Laden. At the time of the
embassy attacks, Fawwaz was alleged by investigators to be
acting as one of bin Laden’s principal Western spokesmen.
The charges against the best known of the five – a former
London-based preacher known as Abu Hamza – also date back before
2001. The Justice Department alleges that he was involved in a
conspiracy to take hostages in connection with a 1998 attack in
Yemen in which four hostages died, and also claims Abu Hamza was
involved in a scheme to set up a training camp for militants in
Bly, Oregon, in 1999 and 2000.
Once evidence began to accumulate after the Sept. 11
attacks, – some of it in the form of Abu Hamza’s public behavior
– he was connected to Zacarias Moussaoui, a French militant
linked to some of the Sept. 11 suspects, and Richard Reid, a
British militant who tried to attack a U.S.-bound airliner with
a bomb hidden in his shoe.
Under U.S. pressure, Abu Hamza, who has a hook for one of
his hands which he said was blown off in Afghanistan, was
eventually driven out of his pulpit at the Finsbury Park mosque
in North London. U.S. authorities did not file charges against
him until 2004.
The two other suspects whose extradition was given a green
light both face trial in federal court in Connecticut for
offenses that also pre-dated the Sept. 11 attacks.
Babar Ahmad and Syed Ahsan are accused by U.S. authorities
of operating pro-al Qaeda websites from 1997 to 2004, and also
of being in contact with a sympathetic U.S. serviceman.
All five suspects were detained in Britain for years without
trial. The case of Ahmad, detained for seven years, became a
cause celebre for human rights activists and some British
members of Parliament.
From the point of view of U.S. counter-terrorism officials
the cases surrounding the five are too dated to be relevant to
their current efforts.
Still, the Obama administration would undoubtedly like to
use any U.S. trials of the extradited subjects to showcase the
openness and equities of the U.S. legal system.
The cutting edge of the Obama administration’s
counter-terrorism policies, however, is not the criminal justice
system, but the use of clandestine operations, and particularly
expanding drone warfare campaigns, against militants in
suspected sanctuaries in Pakistan and Yemen.
Even smooth extraditions and U.S. trials of the suspects
held in London are unlikely to alter that policy.
(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Jackie Frank)
