What Will Obama do with the Gitmo 3?

President Obama asked a military court for a sixty-day freeze in legal proceedings affecting the trial of Sheikh Mohammed and his two co-defendants who plotted the 9/11 attacks. Obama, it appears, has painted himself into a corner. He campaigned against the Bush administration’s treatment of captured terrorist as prisoners of war; prisoners who should be held indefinably in the dungeons at Guantanamo Bay. Instead, Obama (and the Supreme Court) decided that the courts were better suited to fight America’s muddled war on terror. With the clock ticking down the minutes until January 22 – Obama’s deadline for closing Gitmo– the president can’t decide whether to allow military tribunals or civilian courts jurisdiction over the killers of 3,000 Americans. Whatever the president decides, Sheikh Mohammed and his friends plan to make the most of their time in open court. The trio are acting as their own attorneys.

In preparation for their defense, the defendants ordered, and received, a copy of the film “Judgment: The Court Martial of Lt. William Calley,” the 1975 Stanly Kramer film staring Harrison Ford. The film depicts the military trial of Calley for his leadership role in the killing of civilians during the Vietnam War – in what became known as the My Lai massacre. It’s unclear whether the Gitmo 3 hope to glean a better understanding of military court proceedings or if they want to use Calley’s legal strategy in which he gained his freedom after serving three years under house arrest after his murder conviction.

Most of the 9/11 families, and member of congress, hope the trials stay in the military courts. It’s disturbing Obama is conflicted.

In military courts, the presiding officer can clear a court room when matters touching on national security are to be presented. The evidence shared with the defense is not likely to find its way in the hands of the media – the defense attorneys are military men appointed by the court. And most important of all, there are no hung juries. All it takes is a two-thirds vote by a military jury to convict. And appeals are limited and rarely successful. In short, foreign war criminals are not accorded the same constitutional protections of a Charlie Manson or a Timothy McVeigh.

If Obama chooses to grant the terrorists access to our civilian criminal courts, he is forcing the U.S. government to reveal its intelligence secrets in open court while granting foreign terrorists the protections of the U.S. Constitution. Obama’s decision, therefore, puts him in the very real position of showing were his sympathies lie. Will he side with the families who want Sheikh Mohammed and his friends tried as foreign war criminals, or will he side with the Sheikh by prosecuting him as though he was a U.S. citizens? The clock is ticking for Obama.