Terror trials

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani was found not guilty on all but one charge last week by an "anonymous" civilian jury in New York, in a case with ramifications for President Obama's policy toward civilian trials for terror suspects.

Prosecutors had alleged Ghailani helped an al-Qaida cell buy a truck and components for explosives used in a suicide bombing in his native Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998. The attack in Dar es Salaam and a nearly simultaneous bombing in Nairobi, Kenya, killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Ghailani was captured in 2004 in Pakistan and held by the CIA at a secret overseas camp. In 2006, he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

The jury acquitted him on more than 280 charges, including one murder count for each of the 224 people killed. He was found guilty for only one charge -- conspiracy to destroy government buildings. But don't worry. Despite the fact the defendant was found innocent of almost every charge, officials promise Ghailani faces a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a possible life sentence. He will remain in custody till sentencing on Jan. 25 -- and probably forever after.

The acquittal is a blow to the Obama administration's plan to try "War on Terror" Islamic extremists in civilian courts.

In fact, many wonder if the Obama administration will now continue with plans to put other terror detainees -- including self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other terrorism suspects -- on trial on U.S. soil.

Indeed, why should they?

Military interrogations in wartime settings use tactics not countenanced in criminal prosecutions of U.S. citizens. The judge in Ghailani's case decided a star witness would not be allowed to testify because the witness was identified while Ghailani was held at a secret CIA camp that used harsh interrogation techniques.

Defense attorney Peter Quijano apparently convinced the jury that the investigation in Africa was too chaotic to produce reliable evidence.

Of course civilian courts are going to assume evidence can be gathered in the calm manner familiar to viewers of the "C.S.I." TV shows, with police painstakingly sifting for clues behind the security of their yellow tapes. But can such evidence usually be developed in a battle zone on foreign soil?

The explanation offered by the administration is that they wish to try these characters in civilian courts to show off the majesty of the American justice system. Yet they now further assure us these defendants will never go free, even if acquitted? The fact that being acquitted and going free are "no longer an option" is now regarded as a proud feature of our traditional American justice system?

In fact, all that's being achieved is to make American justice look like some Stalinesque show trial -- only not nearly as convincingly run.

War is not pleasant. But you can't win a war if you won't admit you're in one. If the military finds sufficient evidence that a foreign national has been making war on American civilians "behind the lines" without benefit of a recognizable uniform -- in fact, murdering them -- let him be dealt with on the battlefield or in a military tribunal. Instead, we buoy the morale of our enemy, "making war" by feeling up nuns and little girls at the airports, and seizing the prosthetic breasts of loyal American cancer survivors.