...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, June 03, 2003
      ( 8:33 AM )
 
Prosecuting Terror = Eroding Our Rights

Today is a big day for Zacarias Moussaoui - remember him? He is the only person the U.S. is trying to convict for the 9/11 attacks. His case has been slogging along, but today is important. Today, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals is going to hear arguments on whether "terror suspects" can be witnesses in trials such as this. Basically, what the court is deciding is whether people who are charged under "terrorism" laws are due civil court rights. The government, in a move which now appears to have been a little short sighted on their part, vehemently protested when the trial court judge called for a psychiatric exam for Moussaoui when he fired his court-appointed lawyers and declared he wanted to represent himself. The government said that he was perfectly able to defend himself if he wanted to (obviously, their thinking was that he would do more harm to his own case than good). However, being pro se means that he has access to all the discovery available to the prosecution.

As of late, this includes information that Ramzi Binalshibh - one of the architects of the attack, who was arrested and his being held by US "authorities" - has said to his interrogators that Moussaoui was too unreliable and they purposefully excluded him from the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks because he was basically an idiot and they couldn't trust him to carry out any part of the plan. This is what is called "exculpatory evidence," evidence that can basically get Moussaoui acquitted. So, upon hearing this, the trial court judge ordered that Moussaoui be able to interview Binalshibh via video. This is now what is on appeal. The government proclaims that Moussaoui should have no access to Binalshibh or any other terrorist suspect in custody because of NATIONAL SECURITY.

In the past, NATIONAL SECURITY has been the code word for "subvert all civil court rules and just go with the government on this one, and we don't have to tell you why." What is at stake here is whether Moussaoui will get his due process, or whether the Appeals Court will determine that NATIONAL SECURITY is a high enough priority that he not be allowed to use testimony from these witnesses. Basically, this means that the court could determine that certain people are not allowed due process... whatever people the government decides. Ultimately, this issue will most likely end up before the Supreme Court, a court which currently has refused to hear all cases involving the new "Terrorism Laws," and a court not likely to care much about upholding civil rights or the constitution as it has proven though the last few years.

This is scary. Our country is already on a slippery slope to being governed by an authoritarian regime that finds no issue with chipping away at our constitution and our centuries-held beliefs and rights that have been the backbone of the rule of law in this country. It would be extremely embarrassing for the government to lose this case against Moussaoui, it has staked too much on it. It will do anything it can to keep that from happening. But the truth of the matter is, that while he may be guilty of plotting other attacks and of other sorts of fraud and such, he is not guilty of planning or participating in the attacks of 9/11. Once more, the government has failed to focus on the true source of the criminality in that incident. So far, BushCo has attempted to make the American public believe it was Afghanistan that was behind the attacks, then it was Iraq, and now the last best hope, this lone, abysmally fated guy Moussaoui, all despite the fact that the majority of the hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia and other "allied" gulf states, and the leader of the organization that claimed the attacks, Osama Bin Laden, is still at large. Good job, U.S. government.

Indeed, the actual argument is that if the government can manage to subvert the Constitution just this once more, get Moussaoui convicted, leaving out the exculpatory evidence that would acquit him, then we are well on our way to true security and freedom!! We are all players in the Kafka-esque play now - all that's left is to see if we will allow ourselves to be subsumed in it, or force the curtain down on the whole thing. It's important to note that while there is little time left, it actually IS still up to us.

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