Allen West Addresses Transfer of Somali Terrorist to NYC by Obama Administration

The Shark Tank

Congressman Allen West has issued a stern response to President Obama’s recent transfer of a Somali enemy combatant to New York City in order to have his case heard in a civilian court.  Recall that Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder tried this game several months back with 9/11 terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed when they attempted to hold his trial in NYC and not in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.  The Obama Administration eventually caved to pressure by the American people as well as from Democrats and Republicans to not have Mohammed’s case heard on U.S. soil.

Here is West’s statement:

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Terrorist Asks Judge to Dismiss Case

December 2, 2009

The Obama File

Lawyers for a terrorism suspect once held at Guantánamo Bay, who is now facing prosecution in Manhattan, asked a judge on Tuesday to dismiss his case on the ground that his nearly five years in detention denied him “his constitutional right” to a speedy trial.

The terrorism suspect, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who was a cook and a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, was captured in Pakistan in 2004.  He has been charged with conspiring to help carry out Al Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — attacks that killed 224 people.

His speedy trial motion could foreshadow issues that could arise in the prosecution of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the professed organizer of the 9/11 plot, and four other Guantánamo detainees who Obama ordered sent to New York for trial.

“We respectfully submit that this case presents possibly the most unique and egregious example of a speedy trial violation in American jurisprudence to date,” Mr. Ghailani’s lawyers said in a motion that was heavily censored because of its reliance on classified information.

The motion was originally filed several weeks ago with Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, but it was kept almost entirely under seal pending a review by the government.  The new version, with many pages blacked out, was made public on Tuesday.

“This motion asks one primary question,” the lawyers, Peter E. Quijano, Michael K. Bachrach and Gregory Cooper, wrote.  “Can national security trump an indicted defendant’s constitutional Right to a Speedy Trial?  We respectfully submit that the answer is emphatically and without qualification, ‘no.’'”

The Worst Decision By A US President In History

David Horowitz believes the Obama administration has taken a giant step in its march to throw in the towel in the war against radical Islam.  On FoxNews this morning, Peter King said of the decision to try the soldiers of al-Qaeda — who by their own account have no country but their cause — as civilians:

“may be the worst decision by a U.S. president in history.”

It certainly is.  It sends a signal to terrorists everywhere to attack civilians.

The administration is justifying its decisions on the grounds that because the 9/11 attackers targeted civilians they should be tried as civilians.  This makes no sense unless you are a Democrat who believes that the “holy war” that Islamic jihadists have formally declared on us is no different from the acts of isolated individuals who have decided to break the law.  This is the approach to the war on terror that John Kerry championed in 2004.  Now that Americans have had the poor judgment — the suicidally poor judgment — to make a leftist their president, this is the strategy our nation is set to pursue.

The decision to try the jihadists in a civilian court is also a decision which will divulge America’s security secrets to the enemy since civilian courts afford defendants the right of discovery.  It is also a propaganda gift to Islamic murderers who will turn the courtroom into a media circus to promote their hatred against the Great Satan — a hatred shared by their apologists at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the pro-Castro Center for Constitutional Rights who have pioneered the campaign against Guantanamo and whose influence in the Obama Administration is pervasive.  (BTW, The newly appointed lawyer for the president is the husband of Obama’s recently departed Maoist communications director Anita Dunn.)

Finally, this move continues and enlarges the refusal of Obama and the American Left to recognize that:

1.  We are in a war that has been declared on us — in which we, in other words, are the victims.
2.  That the war is conducted by religious armies whose war is inspired by their reading of the Koran.
3.  That the number of Muslims who support their war plan is in the tens of millions
4.  That they are aided and abetted by many Islamic governments and by the international Left.