Bob Goodlatte suspicious of US 9/11 trial

STAUNTON – Sixth District Rep. Bob Goodlatte has joined Virginia U.S. Sen. Jim Webb in criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to try 9/11 terrorists in U.S. courts.

“They should be put before a military tribunal not in our civil criminal courts in the United States,’’ said Goodlatte, R-Va., following Saturday’s Veterans Day Parade in Staunton.

Goodlatte said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accomplices in the 9/11 attacks in New York are “terrorists who are engaging in a militaristic type behavior.”

While the venue is not right, Goodlatte said the decision to try the suspects is appropriate, as was the decision to hold them in a detention center in Guantanamo Bay.

On Friday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he planned to seek the death penalty against all five suspects. Holder said the 9/11 attackers should be brought to justice near the scene of the crime and in U.S. civilian courts.

Holder said he was confident the prosecutions would be successful.

On Friday, Webb, D-Va., expressed his concerns, saying that a civilian court is not the best place.

“Those who have committed acts of international terrorism are enemy combatants, just as certainly as the Japanese pilots who killed thousands of Americans at Pearl Harbor,’’ Webb said in a statement. “It will be disruptive, costly and potentially counterproductive to try them as criminals in our civilian courts.”

Webb said he has “consistently argued that military commissions, with the additional procedural rules added by Congress and enacted by President Obama, are the most appropriate venue for trying individuals adjudged to be enemy combatants.”