Editorial: 9/11 planners to return to NYC -- for trial

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The accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four of his accused accomplices will stand trial where they should have been tried in the first place -- a civilian federal courthouse in Manhattan only blocks from the site of the World Trade Center.

If ever a crime demanded the death penalty it was 9/11 with the senseless loss of nearly 3,000 innocent lives, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says federal prosecutors will seek that ultimate punishment.

Bringing the five from Guantanamo Bay to the mainland for trial has President Barack Obama's critics in a furor, raising groundless fears that they are a danger to U.S. communities and that one day they might be wandering the streets of New York as free men.

House Republican Leader John Boehner, skipping over the nicety that in the American system of justice, defendants, no matter how repulsive, are innocent until proven guilty, raised the possibility that they could be found not guilty "due to some legal technicality. In other words, there's some danger they may get a fair trial.

We should have more faith in our criminal justice system. This is a chance to showcase to the world its openness and fairness. And despite charges to the contrary, the civilian courts can prosecute terrorism cases. A federal criminal court in Virginia successfully prosecuted, and sentenced to life, Zacarias Moussaoui, for the 9/11 conspiracy despite his disruptive behavior and periodic attempts to represent himself.

Moussaoui was the "20th hijacker," a late replacement for a would-be hijacker, Ramzi Binalshibh, who failed to gain entry to the United States. As it happens, Binalshibh is one of the four who will stand trial with Sheikh Mohammed.

The controversy over bringing these five to the U.S. mainland has more to do with their notoriety than any danger they might pose. There was little or no outcry when Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Ghailani was recently brought to New York for trial in connection with the murderous 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa.

And there was little fuss over Holder's decision to bring five other detainees, including a principal suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, from Guantanamo to the United States for trial before a military commission, most likely in a South Carolina naval prison.

Both of these trials, one before a federal civilian court, the other before a U.S. military commission, offer the United States an opportunity to retake the moral high ground as a society that pays more than just lip service to the rule of law.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)