Less than a mile from where two hijacked planes brought down the twin World Trade Center towers more than eight years ago, killing thousands, hundreds of demonstrators gathered Saturday to protest the Obama administration’s decision to try key terrorism suspects in U.S. federal court.
Rallying outside the Manhattan federal courthouse where the trials will be held, protesters denounced the decision to hold trials for the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and four others in a U.S. courtroom instead of a war tribunal, Reuters reported.
The protesters, consisting of relatives and friends of the Sept. 11 victims, called for the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, according to The Washington Independent.
Among the protesters: former assistant U.S. attorney Andy McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted 12 people for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
“We’re back here because [Holder] thinks it’s a crime and we know it’s a war,” McCarthy said. “You don’t bring your enemies to a courthouse.”
McCarthy, who serves as contributing editor of the conservative National Review and has criticized Obama in the past, told the rain-soaked crowd that the United States should not “wrap our enemies in the Bill of Rights.”
Demonstrators waved flags and signs, and chanted “U.S.A.” Speakers who took the stage said the trials would give terrorists a forum to spew hate. They argued that men who planned the attacks that killed thousands of Americans should not be afforded the same constitutional rights as U.S. citizens.
Actor Brian Dennehy read a letter from the parents of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by al Qaeda terrorists in 2002. Pearl’s parents wrote that they “refuse to accept the strategy” of Holder’s decision.
Holder has defended the decision to move the trials from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “At the end of the day, it was clear to me that the venue in which we are most likely to obtain justice for the American people is in federal court,” Holder said in a prepared statement last month to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Reuters placed the number of demonstrators at more than 1,000. The Associated Press said it was closer to several hundred.
Mohammed and his associates will be tried at the federal courthouse in Manhattan, although no date has been set.
The 9/11 Never Forget Coalition organized the rally.
See C-Span’s video of the rally here.
[...] without recourse to Constitutional civil protections, yet this same administration is willing to extend those protections to the terrorist accused of the most deadly attack on U.S. soil since Pearl [...]
[...] sequestering of Hasan, a citizen of the United States, in a military trial while KSM, a foreign combatant, gets a trial in federal court with all to see makes is criminal. I must conclude that this administration is trying to use the [...]
Before the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Circus comes to town attracting freak shows and illusionists to the midway, I thought the following information would be of interest:
Todd Beamer’s memorial service was held on 09/16/01 at the Princeton Alliance Church in Plainsboro, New Jersey. Todd Beamer’s wife, Lisa Beamer, a grieving mother of two and four months pregnant with her third child, registers TODDBEAMER.ORG four days later on 09/20/01, incorporates The Todd M. Beamer Memorial Foundation eight days later on 9/24/01 and then applies for the trademark “Let’s Roll” ten days later on 9/26/01. Instead of acting like a wife and mother who should be experiencing untold grief and loss her behavior turns a catastrophic personal tragedy into a cold and calculating cheap publicity stunt. But then, the U S Government’s 9/11 propaganda machine needed heroes as well as villains paraded through the media to support endless wars that murder indigenous people for control of their natural resources.
The most pivotal image of the events of 9/11 was what the Associated Press published as the photograph of United flight 175 frozen in time as it approached World Trade Center Two and credited to a Carmen Taylor. However, there appears to be a discrepancy in an early image of her and ones that followed. Real jet planes filled with fuel explode and break apart upon impact. They DO NOT mysteriously enter steel and concrete buildings like a hot knife into soft butter without a spark or bent wing tip. The following link elaborates:
https://progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=218&topic_id=10965