What is Abu Khattala’s highest and best use?

According to this report:

The Justice Department says its case against [Ahmed Abu Khattala], accused in the 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, is unusually complex and involves “novel questions of fact and law.”

In a Washington, D.C., federal courtroom Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael DiLorenzo said the government had already begun sharing sensitive documents with defense attorneys. But many of the hundreds of people interviewed by the FBI remain overseas, and many documents are either top secret or in Arabic, or both. . . .

Fantastic! Lawyers live to try cases involving novel questions of fact and law, and judges live to try them. A good time will be had by all.

The terrorist defendant might even be convicted — I assume he probably will be, complex though the case may be. At that point, the trial judge can lecture the defendant about the virtues of our system of justice and its ability to withstand terrorism. The defendant, and terrorists in general, will be unimpressed, but that’s okay. The judge will get plenty of good press and liberals will feel good about themselves for a day.

But will these pleasures justify the costs of the proceedings — including the probable loss of intelligence resulting from abbreviated interrogation, the expense of providing security for a trial in our Nation’s Capital, and the potential harm associated with disclosing “sensitive” documents to the defendant’s lawyers and using such material at trial?

Ahmed Abu Khattala is a soldier in the war being waged by vicious anti-American foreign terrorists against the United States. He has no right to a bells-and-whistles federal trial. He should be subject to ongoing interrogation at Gitmo so that our intelligence agencies can play catch-up in the quest to learn about the terrorist groups that have sprung up in North Africa.

But lawyers call the shots these days, and their urge to put Abu Khattala to their service trumps their desire, if any, to put him to the service of our national security interests.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses