Life Sentence for Sulaiman Abu Ghaith Discredits Guantánamo’s Military Commissions

On Tuesday, in a courtroom in New York City, a long-running chapter in the “war on terror” came to an end, when Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, 48, a Kuwaiti-born cleric who appeared in media broadcasts as a spokesman for Al-Qaeda the day after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, received a life sentence based on the three counts for which he was convicted after his trial in March: conspiracy to kill Americans, providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

The life sentence came as no surprise, as it is permissible for the main conspiracy charge, although Abu Ghaith’s lead defense lawyer, Stanley L. Cohen, had, as the New York Times described it, “sought a sentence of 15 years, saying in a court submission that his client was facing ‘the harshest of penalties for talk — and only talk.’” The Times added that Cohen had likened Abu Ghaith to “an outrageous daytime ‘shock-radio’ host, or a World War II radio propagandist for a losing ideology.”

In court, as the Times also noted, Cohen “emphasized that his client had played no role in specific acts of terrorism,” but the government had argued otherwise, stating in a sentencing memorandum that there was “no fathomable reason to justify a sentence other than life.”

During the court procedings, John P. Cronan, a federal prosecutor, had told the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, that, although Abu Ghaith “had not been an ‘operational terrorist,’ he was ‘just as valuable, if not more so, than the person who strapped a suicide vest on himself and detonates a bomb.’”

That, I believe, is a dangerous argument to make, in a country that values freedom of speech, although it is one that has surfaced before in relation to terrorism since the 9/11 attacks — in the life sentence at Guantánamo in November 2008, after a trial by military commission, of Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a Yemeni who made a promotional video for al-Qaeda (a sentence that has since been largely — though not entirely — overturned and discredited by an appeals court), and in the killing by drone attack of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, in Yemen in September 2011. The US tried to portray al-Awlaki as a “regional commander” of Al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based offshoot, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, although the evidence actually suggests that he was nothing more than a propagandist, and was killed because of the success of his propaganda, which, largely through the internet, disseminated a message of anti-American jihad in the English language.

Nevertheless, Abu Ghaith, who was held for over ten years under a form of house arrest in Iran before being freed in Turkey, and ending up in US custody last year after being deported to Jordan, failed to attract any sympathy from Judge Kaplan.

“You sir, in my assessment, are committed to doing everything you can to assist in carrying out Al-Qaeda’s agenda of killing Americans — guilty or innocent, combatant or noncombatant, adult or babies, without regard to the carnage that’s caused,” Judge Kaplan said at Abu Ghaith’s sentencing.

He added that Abu Ghaith had shown “no remorse whatsoever,” nor had expressed any doubt “about the justification for what was done.” He also said that Abu Ghaith continued to threaten the US, and in fact, as the Times also noted, Abu Ghaith had “offered no apology for his actions and did not ask for leniency. Instead, he told the judge that he would not ‘ask for mercy from anyone except God,’ and warned of the repercussions that his imprisonment would bring.”

“Islam is the religion that does not die when its followers die or get killed,” he said, “and it does not come to a stop when they get captured or imprisoned. At the same moment where you are shackling my hands and intend to bury me alive, you are at the same time unleashing the hands of hundreds of Muslim youth, and you are removing the dust of their minds. Soon, and very soon, the whole world will see the end of these theater plays that are also known as trials.”

Following the sentencing, Eric Holder, the Attorney General, issued a statement in which he said that the “trial, conviction and sentencing have underscored the power” of civilian courts “to deliver swift and certain justice in cases involving terrorism defendants.” He added, “We will continue to rely on this robust and proven system to hold accountable anyone who would harm our nation and its people.”

Just two days later, Holder announced his resignation, although his words should continue to have a resonance. One of the perceived failures of his time as Attorney General was when, having announced in November 2009 that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of planning and involvement in the 9/11 trial would be tried in federal court in New York, he was made to back down when opportunistic critics attacked the administration, and President Obama capitulated to the criticism.

As Eric Holder prepares to leave office, Abu Ghaith’s sentence at least vindicates his belief in federal court trials for those accused of terrorism, in contrast to the cheerleaders for torture and military commissions at Guantánamo. As the New York Times described it, “The trial had been widely watched, in part because the decision to prosecute Mr. Abu Ghaith in the civilian court system had been criticized by some members of Congress, who argued that he should have been held by the military for intelligence purposes.”

When the hysteria over the planned 9/11 trial blew up in late 2009, Jane Mayer of the New Yorker interviewed Holder, and wrote that:

[Holder was] determined not to capitulate on the idea of holding a 9/11 trial. “I don’t apologize for what I’ve done,” he told me at one point. “History will show that the decisions we’ve made are the right ones.” Holder said that he regarded trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a courtroom as “the defining event of my time as Attorney General.”

Unfortunately, Eric Holder — and the Obama administration — elected to keep the military commissions, and five other prisoners at Guantánamo (including Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, whose dubious conviction was mentioned above) were charged at the same time that the 9/11 trial was announced, which was a gift to critics of the trial — and supporters of Guantánamo. It is good that no one new has been sent to Guantánamo under Obama and Holder, but it remains a great shame that the military commissions crawl on, despite being thoroughly discredited, when federal courts are so obviously capable of delivering trials and sentences to those accused of terrorism.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).