The retired naval officer who commanded the USS Cole when it was hit by terrorists says he doesn't agree with the recent decision to try a confessed 9/11 mastermind in New York City.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be tried in a courthouse just blocks from where the World Trade Center stood. Family members of some of the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks are voicing outrage over the decision to take the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks to New York and try him in a federal civilian court. Cdr. Kirk Lippold (USN-Ret.), the senior military fellow at Military Families United, shares their outrage. "The fact that we're going to bring some of the most high-profile terrorists in the world to downtown New York, and once again make that area a target, is an inappropriate use of the judicial system here in the United States," Lippold states emphatically. "We should not be giving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and all the others constitutional rights. We are fighting a war." But Lippold is pleased that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind behind the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, will be tried by the Military Commissions process. "I am very pleased that the Obama administration saw the legitimacy of the Military Commissions process," he says. "I want them to take the time that is necessary so that they have an absolutely rock-solid case for a conviction so that we may exact the ultimate penalty for what that individual did to my ship, my crew -- and more importantly, all those families whose lives were forever altered by the attack on USS Cole." Lippold cannot understand if the Military Commissions are acceptable for the Cole, why they cannot be used to try the 9/11 conspirators as well.
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