Mukasey: Don't Execute The 9/11 Plotters And Make Them Martyrs

LONDON — U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Friday he hopes the men charged with participating in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are not executed if found guilty to avoid making martyrs of them.

Mukasey said many terrorists want to be martyrs and that by sentencing them to death, U.S. authorities risk granting those wishes. He made the comments while answering a question after a talk at the London School of Economics.

However, Mukasey said that the punishment would be fitting if the accused are convicted.

"One of them at least is proud enough of it to have written to his wife that he thinks he is innocent because it was only 3,000 (people who died in the attacks)," he said. "If those are not poster children for the death penalty I don't know who is."

Still, Mukasey said he leans against the death penalty in this case because "many of them want to be martyrs."

The attorney general said his view was a personal opinion. The Justice Department will participate in the trial, he said, but the Defense Department will be in charge.

The U.S. military is moving ahead with plans to try six men at Guantanamo Bay. The six high-profile detainees include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed _ the alleged architect of the attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington _ and Mohammed al-Qahtani, who allegedly would have been one of the hijackers if immigration officers had not prevented him from entering the United States.

Military prosecutors have requested the death penalty, but a Pentagon panel must agree to the prosecutors' recommendations before they are presented to the defense and the military court, U.S. Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said in Washington. That panel has yet to issue its ruling, he said.

Comments

[Krackonis]

06:31 PM on 03/15/2008

Lets not talk about what really happened that day. Please. Lets just go with the myth.

[FrankFurter]

06:30 PM on 03/15/2008

Mukasey said he leans against the death penalty in this case because "many of them want to be martyrs."
What Mukasey didn't say was how difficult it is to effectivel­y torture dead people....

[fourex]

05:47 PM on 03/15/2008

Can we execute those who profited from 9-11?

[GeorgeinPA]

05:15 PM on 03/15/2008

I suggest to Mr. Mukasey that he take a walk down Pennsylvan­ia Ave....to 1600 and arrest the real perpetrato­rs of this terrorist attack. He would accomplish two things, placing blame where it truly belongs, and stopping the criminals in the White House from terrorizin­g the citizens for the remainder of their terms.

[gcallaghan]

05:02 PM on 03/15/2008

Puhleeeze. This has nothing to do with martyrdom. I think Mukasey has a much worse punishment than death in mind for these guys...lik­e spending the rest of their lives in isolation at Gitmo.

[damnadamson]

04:48 PM on 03/15/2008

maybe the bush administra­tion just doesn't want to kill any more innocent people ! don't buy that ... ya neither do i. these Arabs are obviously not the real culprits that committed the crimes of 911. they do make great scapegoats i must admit. dark skin ... muslim ... students in America ... all very convenient­.

ever wonder how these so called 'terrorist­s' got inside the only 3 steel structures to come down due to fires or planes crashing into them? planting some explosives in a building that was being gaurded by George Bush's brother Marvin helps I suppose. so if it wasn't them ... hmmmmmm who knows Marvin well enough to pull this off???

google 'loose change' or 'in plane sight' and watch www.zeitge­istmovie.c­om for more informatio­n.

[jqcitizen]

04:33 PM on 03/15/2008

Attorney General Mukasey seems to be the 3rd Martyr (Ashcroft and Gonzales before him) to defend the former Governor of Texas (George Bush) who executed a few 'guilty' individual­s. And, on at one occasion, more or less even giggled about it.

This Administra­tion will never find an AG that will administer law as written in the Constituti­on of the US.

[SShaw490]

03:22 PM on 03/15/2008

It's silly for Mukasey to even address punishment­. These characters can't be tried in court to begin with. The problem with doing the tough-guy routine and riding roughshod over their human rights is that you lose the ability to ever convict them of anything because any evidence you might have is tainted by coersion. Sooner or later, they'll have to be turned loose.

[adled]

03:07 PM on 03/15/2008

I aggree. The worst punishment for them is to let them do a "time-out' for the rest of their lives. Like Siran Siran they will be 5th page news every 15 years or so, looking for early parole and of course being denied. I personaly will find it interestin­g (every 15 years or so) the pychologic changes they will go through; regret, anger, spiritual rebirth, justificat­ion, withdrawel­, regret, anger, spiritual rebirth, justificat­ion, fear, death. And the only ones interested in them will maybe be their immediate family.

[rosek]

02:26 PM on 03/15/2008

I think they should be locked up for life forced to listen to Britney Spears and Billy Graham...D­eath is the easy way out...
Very interestin­g that we will most likely get the verdict right before the Nov. elections.­..

[eugenegerard]

02:04 PM on 03/15/2008

Mukasey is just beginning to realize he is going to be part of the war crimes investigat­ion. It is a while off but it is going to happen.

[fourex]

01:32 PM on 03/15/2008

How about the 9-11 profiteers­? Why not make them martyrs?

[Krackonis]

01:18 PM on 03/15/2008

Execture them. Bush, Rummy, Gulliani, Bush Sr, and the collection of military companies who conspired to do this.

No one believes this shit anymore.

[Dem02020]

01:04 PM on 03/15/2008

This is BULLSHIT, and it's infuriatin­g.

The Bush administra­tion has no shame in continuing to manipulate the American People's perception of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

We couldn't care less right now, to hear the AG bait the public and the "media" into an inane argument about death sentences, when in fact the Bush administra­tion cleverly tries to skip right on past what is without a doubt the truly most compelling aspect of this matter:

The Bush administra­tion is claiming to have 9/11 plotters/c­onspirator­s!

Really?

Then let's hear all about that!

Stop this bullshit of the Bush administra­tion trying to sneak this "claim" unexamined past the American People's attention (and into the history books no doubt), by launching into a strange argument about punishment­, and the death penalty, when in fact the single most extraordin­ary compelling earth-shak­ing aspect to this matter is:

THE BUSH IS ADMINISTRA­TION IS FALSELY CLAIMING IT HAS 9/11 PLOTTERS, AND IS TRYING TO SNEAK THIS EXTRAORDIN­ARY CLAIM RIGHT PAST YOUR ATTENTION, UNEXAMINED­, INTO THE HISTORY BOOKS, AND LAUNCH YOU (and the idiot "media") INTO AN IMMEDIATE AND FOOLISH ARGUMENT ABOUT THE DEATH PENALTY!

The Bush administra­tion claims it has 9/11 plotters?

Great!

We need JUSTICE for 9/11, we need closure on this matter...

Tell us all about these "plotters"­, and how they are supposedly complicit in the attacks of September 11, 2001... that's the earth-shak­ing news!


But no, that's not going to happen.

The Bush administra­tion doesn't want this false claim of theirs (meant for the history books) of supposed JUSTICE for 9/11 to be examined..­. no, they want to distract you from examining their claim, by launching you (and the idiot "media") into an argumnet about the death penalty.


It's BULLSHIT!

[LeftVetPatriot]

12:24 PM on 03/15/2008

Yeah, just torture them for seven years.
The multitudes of dead Iraqi/Afgh­ani martyrs are meaningles­s anyway, right?
It's just these 9/11 guys' lives that Muslims value.
Fuckin' racist moron.