Convicted terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani stood before a US District Court judge in Manhattan yesterday and got life without parole for his part in the bombing of two US embassies in Africa in 1998.
It was a comforting outcome — no thanks to the Obama administration.
Ghailani, a big-time Islamist terrorist who was tried in a civilian court, very nearly walked after the judge used technicalities to hogtie prosecutors.
As it was, the jury acquitted Ghailani on 284 counts, returning a guilty verdict on a sole conspiracy charge.
It was a close call — and a textbook example of why terrorists captured on the battlefield have no business being brought into civilian court.
The entire fiasco was US Attorney General Eric Holder’s fault. Happily, it may have been a learning experience for Holder and his boss, President Obama.
The administration has begun leaking word that military tribunals for terrorist detainees will soon resume, presumably at the Guantanamo Bay naval station.
If so, the new policy would be a repudiation of Obama’s naive pronouncements of two years ago.
Upon taking office, Obama imposed a moratorium on new trials being brought against detainees — with a goal of closing down Gitmo within a year, as he had promised throughout the campaign.
That idea quickly foundered.
An overwhelmingly Democratic Congress refused to authorize funds to transfer detainees to a stateside location — essentially stopping it in its tracks.
Relaunching tribunals at Gitmo — resuming a derided Bush administration policy — basically leaves only one unresolved issue: what to do with Khalid Sheik Muhammad.
Holder has been dragging his feet for more than a year on the fate of the mastermind of 9/11 — after Holder’s original plan, trying KSM in a New York federal court, collapsed in the face of bitter opposition.
So, given that the administration is finally admitting that Gitmo is here to stay, Holder should just take this signal to its logical conclusion.
Give KSM a military tribunal there — and render unto him the justice to which he’s due.