Clinton on Terrorists: I Want to See These Guys Executed or in Prison - Fox News

Published November 21, 2010

| FoxNews.com

The one-count guilty verdict against terror detainee Ahmed Ghailani disappointed many Americans who thought the government had a rock-solid case, but civilian courts are still more successful at getting convictions than military commissions, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday.

And that means more sentences to satisfy Americans looking for justice against plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and other assaults on U.S. interests, Clinton said. 

"I’m well aware, as a former senator from New York on 9/11, how important it is to get this right. I want to see these guys behind prison or executed, whatever is appropriate in the individual cases," Clinton told "Fox News Sunday."

"But when you look at the success record in civilian courts of convicting, sentencing, detaining in maximum security prisons by the civilian courts, it surpasses what yet has been accomplished in the military commissions," she said. 

Ghailani, who had been held in a CIA secret prison and then transferred to Guantanamo, was brought up on 284 counts, including the murder of 224 people at the U.S. embassy complexes in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. He was convicted of one count of conspiracy.

The verdict shocked many security experts since most court-watchers thought his would be the easiest terror case to prosecute. The ruling led to howls against the use of civilian courts for terror detainees.

But Clinton said the one count earned Ghailani 20 years to life, and the case would have been tried the same way in both the military or civilian courts. 

Clinton acknowledged, however, that for some terror detainees, civilian trials are "not appropriate."

"You will get no argument from this administration on that point," she said, adding that the Obama administration is trying to move toward trials in a way that "maximizes the outcome that is in the best interest of the security of the American people."

"So I don't think you can, as a rule, say, 'Oh, no more civilian trials or no more military commissions.' President Obama's theory of this is that most should be in Article III (civilian) courts, some should be confined to military commissions. But as things stand right now, we have actually gotten more convictions, and more people, more terrorists, are serving time in prison right now, because of Article III courts than military commissions."

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Failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad gets life in prison sentence - Los Angeles Times

An artist's rendering of convicted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad during his sentencing hearing in New York. (Reuters / October 5, 2010)

During his sentencing Tuesday to life in prison, Faisal Shahzad — a Pakistani immigrant who gave up a secure suburban life in America to become a terrorist for Islam — was unapologetic about his botched attempt to kill dozens of people in Times Square last spring.

After a federal judge declared that he would never leave prison, Shahzad smiled faintly, held up an index finger and declared, "Allah Akbar."

U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum did not bother to review parole possibilities because she said there were none.

"You appear to be someone who was capable of education," she said later, "and I do hope that you will spend some of the time in prison thinking carefully about whether the Koran wants you to kill lots of people."

As he did throughout the half-hour sentencing, Shahzad, 31, interrupted her to press his religious viewpoint: "The Koran gives us the right to defend, and that's what all I'm doing."

On May 1, on a bustling corner of Broadway in the theater district, Shahzad parked an SUV loaded with three homemade bombs and tried to set them off. When his attempt fizzled, he returned by train to suburban Connecticut, where he'd been living off and on since he moved to America to attend college. Authorities tracked Shahzad through the vehicle and the keys he left dangling from the ignition, and two days later he was arrested at JFK International Airport aboard a plane that was about to take off for the Middle East.

At one point Tuesday, Cedarbaum asked whether Shahzad hadn't taken an oath of allegiance to the United States when he became an American citizen a year before the bombing attempt.

"I did swear, but I did not mean it," Shahzad said. "Human-made" laws, he elaborated, were corrupt and meant nothing to him because he abided by "sharia," or Islamic law.

"I see," the judge said, "You took a false oath?"

"Yes," Shahzad said.

Shahzad's beard and hair, spilling out from under a white prayer cap, had grown long and bushy since he last appeared in court in late June and announced his desire "to plead guilty 100 times over." Again, Shahzad lectured the judge and a packed courtroom about his guilt: "If I am given 1,000 lives, I will sacrifice them all for the sake of Allah fighting this cause, defending our lands, making the word of Allah supreme over any religion or system."

He went on to explain how Muslims would never accept having Western forces in their countries fighting on a "pretext for your democracy and freedom." The past nine years of war, he said, had achieved nothing except to awaken Muslims to defend their "religion, people, honor and land."

The son of a retired Pakistani air force marshal, Shahzad grew up mostly in a secular, upper-middle class neighborhood in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city. He came to the United States in 1998 as an undergraduate student, and over the years attained many of the trappings of what many here consider a successful life — two university degrees, a wife and two small children, a house in the suburbs, credit cards and a job as a junior financial analyst.

But the U.S. military presence in Muslim countries and perceived insults by Westerners toward Islam apparently had begun plaguing Shahzad, according to reports of what he told investigators, and he became increasingly religious. He returned last winter to his native Pakistan, first to spend time with family in Peshawar and later to attend terror camp in the volatile Waziristan region, where he learned to make bombs.

After he returned to America, he left his job, allowed a house he owned in Shelton, Conn., go into foreclosure and sent his young family to live in Pakistan with his parents. Living in a rundown neighborhood in Bridgeport, Conn., he began monitoring via the Internet a crowded corner in Times Square where he planned to blow up his vehicle. He told police he'd hoped to kill at least 40 people on the first try, and that if hadn't been caught he would have kept trying to blast through crowded areas in New York City until he was arrested or killed.

Toward the end of the hearing Tuesday, the judge, who had commented with obvious disgust on Shahzad's lack of remorse, explained the appeal process to him. He nodded and again smiled at her before plainclothes officers handcuffed him and escorted him out of the courtroom.

geraldine.baum@latimes.com

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