Trying Terrorists

[stickmaker]

Terrorists are not soldiers. They are criminals. Trying them in a military court grants them a validity they do not have and do not deserve.

Comments

[maellenkleth]

Actually, shooting francs-tireurs out of hand is a legitimate act under the Geneva Conventions.

[edited because my dictation engine chokes on Latinate words]

[donsimpson.livejournal.com]

I've heard it suggested that they be put in the same legal category as pirates. I don't know what legal status pirates have, though I gather there is a body of international law on the subject.

Treating terrorists as soldiers implies that we are at war with them, rather than acting as police. Giving terrorists the same rights as criminals would definitely be a step up.

There is an old saw about the difference betwen a terrorist and a freedom fighter being which side you are cheering for, but blowing up office buildings or school buses does not seem to me to be conducive to freedom.

[kengr]

Actually, we *can't* try them (the folks in Gitmo) in civilian courts. They don't have the jurisdiction as the crimes took place outside the US.

A lawyer could quite literally state that the alleged crimes took place on another country and move for his client to be released. And if the court was following the law, they'd have to do it.

(Note that the two different cases of folks on airliners is different. That gets into who owns the plane, and also either end of the flight can claim them).

Trying them in military courts has a lot of precedents behind it. Basically the military can try you for crimes against troops in the field, or in an area they are occupying.

Now if we ever get anybody we can directly tie to something like 9/11, *they* can (and should be!) tried in the regular courts.

BTW, from all accounts thetre are some "terrorists" in Gitmo that we can't legally try under *any* legal theory. They were grabbed outside of Iraq or Afghanistan, not in places we could otherwise claim jurisdiction, and turned over to us by third parties.

Unless we can show they were behind an attack on the US, we don't have any legal reason for holding them, no matter *what* we are claiming they were involved in.

The only precedents in favor of holding *that* class of "criminal" are ones that were a bad idea in the first place (essentially several court decisions in the US and a few other countries that either say it's ok to kidnap someone to bring them to stand trial in another country, or that you can be tried in country A for actions which are illegal in Country A, but that you did in country B where they were legal)