Terrorism and torture: a presumption of innocence for the powerful but not for anybody else

tom engelhardt...

The presumption of innocence may be slowly dying in the courtrooms where our terror trials are being held, as Karen Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at NYU Law School and author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, points out in today’s post. Here’s the curious thing, though: that presumption is stronger than ever when it comes to those who once ran or carried out the Global War on Terror. Afghanistan to Washington, Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo, they all continue to live within a bubble of official innocence.

karen greenberg...

Guilty Until Proven Guilty
Threatening the Presumption of Innocence

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Since September 12, 2001, Americans have been systematically cowed to a degree that is hard to grasp, and the justice system in this country has in no way been inoculated from this virus. If you need a measure of which way the currents of politics are running today, start with the political calculation that the Obama administration has had to make when it comes to the trial of KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed], which has only grown that much more difficult in the wake of the Ghailani verdict.

So, too, for those of us who favor civilian trials. How do we really feel about having been put in a position where, to defend the merits of the system of justice, we feel compelled to equate certain conviction with the notion of success?

The deepest principle of American justice is being tested, right now in Washington, in lower Manhattan in the wake of the Ghailani verdict, and elsewhere. With terrorism trials, the more serious they get, the more the presumption of innocence seems to lie at the mercy of politics.

it's really a very vicious circle... when you capture, detain, torture and hold presumed terrorists for years without charges or trial, you are going to look even worse than you already do when they finally do come to trial and are subsequently acquitted so you better make damn sure the verdict is guilty, whether it's a civilian or a military trial... the implications of that for a fair, jury of your peers-based justice system underpinned by the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is frightening to contemplate... the sad reality is that "contemplation" at this stage of reality is just wishful thinking...

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