Eric Holder

9/11, al Qaeda, Daniel Pearl, Eric Holder

Statement by Judea and Ruth Pearl on Eric Holder’s Decision To Try Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in Federal Court

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Statement by Judea and Ruth Pearl read at the New York rally by Brian Dennehy
December 5 2009

Friends,

On behalf of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, we wish to join you today in a call to reverse Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try America’s new-type of enemies in New York Federal court.

We wish to add to your rally the perspective of our own personal tragedy which, in many ways, has come to symbolize the depth of inhumanity that has swept our planet in the 21st century, and the sense of urgency with which this planet is currently watching your rally, in New York City, a rally that may very well hold the key to the future of open society.

We, who witnessed the darkest side of hell, and have since spent every moment of our lives studying the anatomy of terror, we refuse to accept the strategy of normalization that Holder’s decision represents. Terror is a crime against society, and should not be tried in the same court as crimes against individuals or against a particular country.

Let us make it perfectly clear. We are not concerned about the safety issues that this trial poses to New York City — we trust our law enforcement officers. Nor are we concerned about the anguish of our children who will be seeing the memories and values of their loved ones mocked and ridiculed in the court room — they have known greater pains before. We are concerned about the millions of angry youngsters, among them potential terrorists, who will be watching this trial unfold on Al Jazeera TV and come to the realization that America has caved in to Al Qaeda’s demands for publicity. The atrocity of 9/11 and the brutal murder of Daniel Pearl are vivid reminders of terrorists’ craving to dramatize their perceived grievances against the West.

Today, America has given them an even lauder mega-phone — in the best theater in town — and thus signaled to thousands of would-be terrorists that joining Al Qaeda or other terror organizations is one way to obtain that craved-for mega-phone.

We who have studied the anatomy of terrorism cannot accept the logic that terror has no country therefore it cannot be defined, named and fought with the same determination and creativity that civilized society has fought other existential threats since the invention of gun powder. These include high-seas piracy, the introduction of poison gas and the threat of nuclear weapons; all were contained by creative changes in international law and the establishment of new legal categories. The invention of the suicide belt is of no lesser threat.

Terror is an ideology that elevates one’s grievances above the norms of civilized society and, like any epidemic of global dimension it must be fought by attending to the distinct mechanisms that transmit and propagate the disease.

In 2002, the international community has given America a moral mandate to fight the new epidemic with all the necessary instruments, including a new court system and new legal regimes. The decision to try the arch-symbols of terror in ordinary criminal court, using traditional legal instruments, constitutes a betrayal of that mandate.

Mr. Attorney General, our children and grand-children are imploring you today: Please reclaim America’s mandate to secure a brighter future for our troubled world!

Judea and Ruth Pearl
Los Angeles, California

9/11, Eric Holder, Greg Manning, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, World Trade Center

Husband of WTC survivor Lauren, Greg Manning calls federal 9/11 trial for KSM ‘outrageous’

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Husband of WTC survivor Lauren, Greg Manning appeared on Fox News this morning about our rally tomorrow, Saturday December 5, at noon in Foley Square, in lower Manhattan. The rally will be in front of the same federal courthouse — a mere six blocks from al Qaeda’s greatest victory — where AG Eric Holder thinks war criminal Khalid Sheihk Mohammed should be given a stage, Constitutional rights, the right to act as his own attorney, and to see the classified evidence against him during time of war. Greg Manning calls the decision “outrageous.”

Do you believe that Greg and Lauren Manning hold the minority view among 9/11 family members, survivors, first responders, and eye witnesses of that day and those that followed? Here is a sampling (that I will add to today and tonight) from the hundreds of comments and emails from them:

On 9/11/01 I worked on the 40th floor of the Federal Building and witnessed first hand the horrific terrorist attack on the WTC. As a Federal official involved in assisting the survivors’ families, I saw the terrible list of the 343 heroic firefighters and the NYPD and NJNYPA police officers. To permit this show trial to take place here is despicable. And we all know how this will end, with more terrorist attacks on New York, whether in the subways or on buses or train lines, or a Major Hassan style shoot-out in the streets. This trial must be stopped, lives are at stake. — Paul Doersam

I was working the elections that day and at the main center on Houston Street, I saw the attack. This will stay with me forever, and I cannot believe that these people are being given a fair trial as if it was a criminal act. THIS WAS A WAR CRIME. I had three people who could not get to their homes that evening stay at my apartment in New York City Greenwich Village. We went to the Fire Station with new socks (sounds minimal), but the firemen were thrilled to have dry socks … all of New York shared in this horror. No trial in New York City! — Barbara Harkness

As a mother who lost her 23 year old son on September 11th, and recently visited GTMO and saw this animal in action [Ed. — That link is proof of her words], I am grief-stricken that Eric Holder has made a decision to move KSM to Manhattan. My son deserves justice. This terrorist does not deserve the rights he stole from the Americans he murdered. NOR does he deserve the media circus his being in NYC will feed. I only wish that the brave young men and women who found him had just killed him then and there. — Judith Reiss, mother of Joshua Scott Reiss, World Trade Center

I don’t know where to right this letter so I am putting it here. For 4 months I worked at the WTC, I was the night shift supervisor for the clean up of the North Tower and building 6. Not a night went by that I didn’t feel the grief emanating from Ground Zero. I can’t explain to you the pain or the nightmares that I have. I felt the anguish of those left behind by this mass murder. I called my 15 year old son from the site one night and through my tears I told him how much I loved him, realizing how tenuous our lives can be. On Christmas eve a girl of about 5, in a yellow dress and holding a doll, appeared to me and asked “Where’s my daddy?” One night in January I dressed to go back to “The Pit” and when I got to my door I couldn’t open it. I broke down and I knew I could never go back there. To this day I feel that I let you people down by not helping to look through the 10% of debris that still remained for your loved ones. I’m sorry but I did all I could. I want you do know that it was never just a job. It’s hard to explain but it was the hardest job I ever had to go to but in the morning it was also the hardest job to leave. — Christian Heinbockel

Additional entries will appear below, as I add them.