On Wednesday, Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about the trial of a Tanzanian man accused in a plot to bomb two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.  A federal judge barred prosecutors from using a key witness because the witness’s identity was discovered through questionable interrogation techniques used in secret CIA custody.  At a hearing last week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz said Mr. Abebe was a “giant” witness for the government and directly linked Mr. Ghailani to the explosives used in the attack.  The move by the federal judge will delay the trial for a week. 

This is only one of thes problem in conducting trials of terrorists in civilian courts.  There are also serious national security concerns about showing evidence to terrorists and having them share it with their lawyers (who might then choose to share it with terrorist organizations). 

The article points out:

“The danger here isn’t just to the case, either.  The DoJ will now go to an appeals court in order to carve out exceptions to Miranda and interrogation limits, which won’t just apply to AQ terrorists captured outside of the country.  Those exceptions will apply to everyone in the federal system.  The entire point of this vanity trial in federal court is for Obama to claim that (a) Bush was wrong when he pushed for military commissions (even though Obama plans to use them in other cases) and (b) that American civil courts can handle any kind of case from any jurisdiction, using the same laws that apply to US citizens.  If they go to the appellate court and argue for special treatment of Ghailani and others in his circumstance, it’s an explicit admission that those laws don’t work in these situations, and that the court was the wrong venue from the beginning.”

We are at war with people who murder innocent civilians in the name of Islam.  When we capture one of these people, we need to realize that he is a terrorist and try him in a military tribunal, where secrets can be kept and justice can be served.  We need to remember how we handled spies and saboteurs during World War II and follow our own example.