Military Tribunal

In a decision hailed by human rights advocates, the Mexican Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that military officers and personnel be tried in civilian courts, not military tribunals, when accused of torture, extrajudicial killing and other abuses. The court's unanimous ruling marks a radical change in the way human rights cases involving the military should be prosecuted. As the number of alleged violations has soared in recent years amid the Mexican drug war, advocates have increasingly and vociferously demanded that the cases be heard by civilian courts.

After an attack of confidence-shaking violence by political terrorists, a leading U.S. legal figure pushes for a civilian trial instead of a military tribunal for a suspect in the attack. But he is overridden by a political tide arguing against a public trial and in favor of national security. It sounds a lot like Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.'s attempt to prosecute accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a New York federal court. In fact, it's a movie about an event that took place well more than a century ago: "The Conspirator," Robert Redford's account of the trial of accused John Wilkes Booth collaborator Mary Surratt.

His words leave little doubt about his role. It is his punishment that remains uncertain. Four years ago, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed not only brazenly portrayed himself as mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The senior Al Qaeda operative also bragged to a U.S. military tribunal that he had directed other major terrorist attacks around the globe. Mohammed claimed responsibility for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, for the "shoe bomber" attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner in 2001, for the deadly bombing of a nightclub in Indonesia, for planned assassination attempts against Pope John Paul II and President Clinton, and for aborted attacks in London, Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere.

The Obama administration admitted defeat in its efforts to prosecute the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks before a civilian jury in New York City, announcing that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others would be tried by a military commission at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The decision, announced Monday by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., marks a sharp political setback for President Obama, who had repeatedly pledged to use civilian courts to try "high-value" terrorism suspects.

The few, the voters Re "Incumbents hold edge in L.A. council races," March 9 I would like to thank the 82.41% of registered voters of the great city of Los Angeles for having such trust and confidence in the 11.59% of us who voted in Tuesday's election. Half of the City Council, half of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education and half of the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees were picked. Voters also weighed a bunch of ballot measures that will decide where some of our tax money will go. Yes, less than 12% of us decided how the city will be run for the next few years.

The first captive at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be charged in a military tribunal during the Obama presidency is expected to be one of the prison's most notorious inmates — Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole that killed 17 sailors. And his case, beset with Nashiri's allegations of torture and mistreatment, is fraught with complications for the administration, which this week reversed course and announced it would maintain the George W. Bush legacy of holding military tribunals inside the Caribbean fortress.

At first glance, the military trials of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay appear to be winding down. One prisoner recently pleaded guilty to murder and other charges, and just one more, Noor Uthman Mohammed of Sudan, is charged with war crimes for alleged complicity with Al Qaeda. Of nearly 800 terrorism suspects brought to this remote U.S. base in southern Cuba over nearly nine years, 174 remain, most because of diplomatic troubles between Washington and their home countries rather than out of concern they would pose a security threat if freed.

The youngest prisoner at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is scheduled to stand trial Tuesday on allegations of killing a U.S. soldier and partially blinding another, and the outcome probably will spark renewed international debate over the practice of incarcerating and prosecuting child soldiers. Eight years a captive at the prison for terrorism suspects, Omar Ahmed Khadr, 23, released a letter through his lawyers this spring warning that if the Obama administration takes him to trial in a military tribunal, it could reveal "what is going on down here.

The White House is considering an end to its effort to prosecute the suspected Sept. 11 plotters in a civilian court and may send them instead before military tribunals, in an apparent retreat from President Obama's pledge to overhaul the Bush administration's detention policies. Last year, the Obama administration announced it would try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others in federal court in New York. That step came after Obama overhauled interrogation policies and ordered the shutdown of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Nigerian man arrested on Christmas Day for allegedly trying to explode a bomb on a plane arriving in Detroit has begun talking again to authorities, officials said Tuesday, a development that is likely to ratchet up the debate over whether he should be tried in federal court or before a military tribunal. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, confirmed that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had changed his mind and was speaking to federal agents again.