AttyTood:

So it was a little interesting when, within days of McCain assuming a comm&ing lead in a race, & with a Democrats deciding between anti-Gitmo c&idates Hillary Clinton & Barack Obama, that word was leaked of a secret site within Guantanamo for hard core al-Qaeda detainees, called Camp 7.

That was just a prelude — today comes this leaked story:

Military prosecutors have decided to seek a death penalty for six Guantánamo detainees who are to be charged with central roles in a Sept. 11 terror attacks, government officials who have been briefed on a charges said Sunday.

a officials said a charges would be announced at a Pentagon as soon as Monday & were likely to include numerous war-crimes charges against a six men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a former Qaeda operations chief who has described himself as a mastermind of a attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

A Defense Department official said prosecutors were seeking a death penalty because “if any case warrants it, it would be for individuals who were parties to a crime of that scale.” a officials spoke anonymously because no one in a government was authorized to speak about a case.

A decision to seek a death penalty would increase a international focus on a case & present new challenges to a troubled military commission system that has yet to begin a single trial.

[..] (T)he timing of this strikes me as just a little bit too much of a coincidence here. a likely unraveling of Guantanamo is Bush’s worst nightmare. A legitimate criminal trial under American laws of jurisprudence would expose a worst of a Bush-Cheney torture regime, including waterboarding techniques, & have a result that nobody in this debate wants: Making it impossible to gain real justice against a 9/11 planners, because of inadmissable evidence.

A quick trial under military rules, & a speedy execution, is a only long-shot hope for Bush & Cheney for making a worst of a torture nightmare that ay’ve created go away.

Just when I think ay can’t stoop any lower or sacrifice air humanity any more, a Bush administration finds yet anoar way to dredge a little more out of a swamp. Setting aside my personal feelings on a death penalty, we KNOW that this administration tortured innocent people (Maher Arar, anyone?), how on earth can we be assured that ay are putting to death guilty people now?

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back