Webb to Holder: Rethink decision

Virginia’s senior U.S. senator does not want alleged 9-11 conspirators or other terrorist suspects to be tried in civilian courts in New York or Northern Virginia, as proposed by members of the president’s administration.

Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, joined five other senators from both parties Tuesday in calling for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to reverse his decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged 9-11 terrorists in civilian courts rather than military commissions.

“The attacks of 9-11 were acts of war, and those who planned and carried out those attacks are war criminals. Today, those who subscribe to the same violent ideology … continue to plan and execute attacks against innocent civilians all over the world,” Webb wrote in a letter Tuesday to Holder also endorsed by Republican Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins and Blanche Lincoln and Independent Joe Lieberman.

“It is not in our national interest to provide them further publicity or additional advantage.”

Putting Mohammed and other alleged 9-11 terrorists on trial in lower Manhattan blocks from Ground Zero, as Holder has proposed, would provide “one of the most visible platforms in the world to exalt their past acts and to rally others in support of further terrorism,” the letter said.

It also referenced recent correspondence from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg indicating that the city would spend more than $200 million per year in security for the planned trial.

Webb also expressed strong concerns about the administration’s reported plans to try terrorist suspect Riduan Isamuddin in an Alexandria court. Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, is allegedly connected with the 2002 nightclub bombing in Bali.

“Hambali is Indonesian,” Webb said in a news release Wednesday. “He was involved in a terrorist attack inside Indonesia that killed 202 people. He is the former leader of an Indonesian terrorist organization. He was captured in Thailand and brought to Guantanamo. The Indonesian government … wants to try him. I do not understand the relevance of trying him as a common criminal in the civilian courts of the United States.”

Webb, in addition, said he does not support moving war criminals to the U.S. for any reason.

President Barack Obama, early in his presidency, vowed to close the notorious detention center at Guantanamo Bay by this month; that deadline has since passed. Obama told Fox News in November he anticipated it would close sometime in 2010.

As of Monday, there were 192 prisoners being held at Gitmo following the transfer of an Uzbek national to Switzerland, the Associated Press reported.

Two government officials said a presidential task force recommended at least 80 prisoners be brought to the U.S. for trial, military commission or continued imprisonment without charges, according to the AP.

Culpeper’s Congressman Eric Cantor, a national leader in the Republican Party, has long voiced his opposition to transferring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the U.S. for trial or imprisonment.

In November, soon after Holder’s announcement that Mohammed would stand trial in New York City, Cantor described the decision as “a fool’s errand.”

In a column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Cantor said, “treating terrorism as if it were a matter of domestic law enforcement is more accurately a step backward that only invites pain.”