Buzz Paths

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that five Guantanamo Bay detainees with alleged ties to the 9/11 conspiracy, including accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be transferred to New York to go on trial in civilian court.

So now we have a corrupt, plastic neophyte of a president, a secretary of Homeland Security employed because she “can see Mexico from her house,” a Treasury Secretary who is guilty of tax fraud, and an anti-Gitmo Attorney General who worked for a firm who will directly benefit from the closing of Gitmo, which is a blatant conflict of interest.

The prestigious D.C. law firm where Attorney General Eric Holder is a senior partner, Covington & Burling, just happens to represent 17 detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

From the firm’s web site:

Guantanamo Bay Detainees

* We represent sixteen men detained at the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Most of the men have been detained for approximately seven years. None have been charged with any crimes, and none have been accorded the protections of the Geneva Convention. In Boumediene v. Bush, 128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008), where we were co-counsel for eleven of the detainees, the Supreme Court held that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus extends to detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. Following that decision, we have been preparing for habeas corpus hearings to be held in federal district court Washington, DC, for eleven of our clients.

* The firm has been involved in the Guantánamo related litigation for the last five years. In addition to the on-going habeas corpus proceedings, our efforts have included: bringing cases for review of enemy combatant classification decisions in the D.C. Circuit under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005; challenging the destruction of CIA torture tapes in federal court; filing amicus briefs and coordinating the amicus effort in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006); filing amicus briefs in support of Supreme Court review in Moussaoui v. United States, 382 F.3d 483 (4th Cir.), cert denied, 544 U.S. 931 (2005); challenging the government’s practice of redacting information from documents given to security-cleared habeas counsel; and challenging the abusive medical and living conditions that the detainees experience at Guantánamo.

Just the latest disturbing development regarding a guy who lobbied for pardoning convicted FALN terrorists against the judgment of the FBI and U.S. attorneys.

No wonder he is not in favor of Military Tribunals. During his Senate hearing Holder was steadfast in his decision, saying he was confident his choice of venue was legally sound and would produce a conviction. He denied that his Justice Department was going soft on terror and cited a number of arrests in cities nationwide.

Holder’s main refrain, however, was that the decision to hold the trial in civilian court rather than a military commission was not political and was instead based on where he thought his best chance for conviction was.

Holder should recuse himself from any participation in any case involving detainees.

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