May 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Brigadier General Mark Martins is
an honorable man with an impossible job: Convicting Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed and his associates of the Sept. 11 attacks
without making it look like a show trial.
The arraignment on May 5 at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had all
the hallmarks of a disaster in the making. The defendants
refused to cooperate or even acknowledge the authority of the
court. The prosecution and, for a time, the judge appeared
willing to suppress the defense’s efforts to bring up the
waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques used
against some of the defendants. Above all this loomed the
greatest challenge to the legitimacy of the tribunal: No one,
inside the room or outside, thinks there is any chance that
Mohammed will not end up executed.
