Israel Matzav: Germans object to Mohamed death penalty

Germans object to Mohamed death penalty

I was in New York last week when President Obumbler's moronic attorney general, Eric Holder, promised that Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the mastermind of 9/11, would be convicted in his civilian trial and get the death penalty. Unsurprisingly, Holder has not thought this through. Some of the evidence to be used at the trial on which Holder and his boss insist was provided by the German government. The German government does not believe in the death penalty. They are sending a team to New York to make sure that Mohamed is not put to death.

Germany, which does not have a death penalty, provided evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence. Several members of the al Qaeda cell that planned and executed the attacks of September 11 were previously based in the northern German city of Hamburg.

"In this case we will observe very closely that the given assurances are kept," Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said.

However it was unclear exactly how evidence from Germany would be distinguished from evidence procured from elsewhere.

The defense lawyer for one of the accused, Ramzi Binalshibh, said that a conviction of his client would "scarcely be possible without evidence from Germany."

What could go wrong?

Der Spiegel adds:

This presents the German government with a dilemma. Berlin can either oppose the use of German evidence in a bid to protect the defendants from execution -- and risk alienating a NATO ally in the process -- or it can approve the use of the incriminating documents, which would contravene Germany's position on the death penalty.

According to the current mutual legal assistance agreement between the two countries, should the information furnished by German investigators be used to impose the death penalty, Germany can insist that this evidence be considered inadmissible in court. This would not be the first time that the Germans have demanded such assurances for criminal proceedings.

The trial in New York is threatening to put a strain on German-American relations. Washington already feels that Germany has let it down by refusing to take in former detainees after the Obama administration decided to close Guantanamo. What's more, when it comes to bringing the terrorists behind 9/11 to justice, there is currently very little understanding in the US for any legal concerns that Berlin might have.

...

The problems facing Germany in the upcoming New York trial are considerably more serious. Moussaoui had never lived in Germany and the dispute over evidence in his trial concerned only very few documents. But it is another story altogether with Ramzi Binalshibh, who was allegedly the main logistics man behind the attacks. He lived in Germany for six years and shared an apartment in Hamburg with two of the 9/11 suicide pilots, including Mohammed Atta, who crashed the first plane into the Twin Towers.

Working out of Germany, Binalshibh gathered information about flight training schools in the US and regularly transferred large sums of money to the future 9/11 hijackers. There were, therefore, a large number of references to the results of the German investigation in the old indictment against Binalshibh, which the Bush administration had hoped would be used in a trial heard before a military commission.

...

Aside from that, federal prosecutors in New York will find it difficult to use confessions coerced using highly controversial interrogation methods such as waterboarding. "It is hard to imagine how the government could present a case against Ramzi Binalshibh where a significant portion of the government case would not be based on evidence gathered in Germany," says Thomas Durkin, who is a member of the ACLU John Adams Project and a member of Binalshibh's defense team.

This explains why Holder's announcement of the trial has alarmed the German Justice Ministry in Berlin and its subordinate agency in Bonn, the Federal Office of Justice, which is responsible for mutual legal assistance.

Another off-the-cuff, not thought out Obama administration decision going bad?

Israel Matzav: Germans object to Mohamed death penalty