The Guantanamo Bay detention facility won’t close this week as originally slated, but the moment that some detainees will have their day in court is nearing. Next on the Justice Department’s list? The alleged mastermind behind the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people: Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali.
Unnamed DOJ officials said last week that Hambali may be tried in a Washington, D.C. courthouse. No timeframe announced yet, but the AP calls this possibility a rejection of the policies of former President Bush, who portrayed Hambali as a “success story” that resulted from interrogating terror suspects in secret CIA prisons.
In particular, Bush made the case that Hambali’s interrogation at a CIA black site produced invaluable evidence, leading to several terrorist plots being disrupted. But — rather like Bush’s claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and yellowcake uranium in Niger — this convenient myth has been roundly debunked, as detailed by the American Prospect‘s Adam Serwer.
Paired with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s prosecution in New York City, Hambali’s trial in DC would transform both sites of 9/11 carnage into reaffirmations of America’s recommitment to rule of law. After years of U.S. leaders trying to draw an easy dichotomy between national security and our country’s best ideals, an administration that trusts the the American judicial system is a heartening change.
As President Obama said last May, “From Europe to the Pacific, we’ve been the nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law. That is who we are.”
Or at least who we want to be. Both Obama and Attorney General Holder’s commitment to the rule of law sometimes seems spotty. Not only does Guantanamo still house hundreds of detainees, but there’s fear that this role is increasingly being duplicated at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. Likewise, the administration’s continued invocation on the so-called “state secrets privilege” is disturbingly reminiscent of the Bush regime. And despite recent promises that a report on the Bush torture program was close to completion, the administration has yet to embrace torture accountability.
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