Soon Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men allegedly involved in the World Trade Center attacks will be arriving in our state. As federal prosecutors prepare to take the first steps in their civilian case by indicting the group, President Barack Obama has given Congress the required 45 days of notice in anticipation of delivering the defendants from Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) Naval Base to Manhattan.

The move has been seen as controversial by some who cite security concerns and worry that the men who have not yet faced a courtroom, may be found innocent if guaranteed a fair trial. It would be hard to imagine a fair trial without such a possibility.

Any prosecutor faced with handling the case is going to have to inevitably confront the CIA’s enhanced interrogation methods (torture double speak).

You see our justice system in this country has no tolerance for the abuse of prisoners in any fashion, let alone an organized effort to extract information through physical and psychological pain. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed alone was water boarded more than a hundred times in a month.

The challenge here is the judicial system now takes a position that not one has really yet stood for, it believes in a fair unbiased trial based on evidence, witness testimony and the men charged in these crimes are not presumed guilty.

Held at Gitmo for the last six years, can you imagine the scene in about 45 days when the judge reads the charges against the defendants and then tells them they are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?

He’ll then begin explaining the general rights they are entitled to, which ironically before that moment they haven’t been.

After breaking judicial mandates for so long, flexing the limits of our own Constitution to the breaking point, violating international treaties regarding the treatment of prisoners and under practices carried out at the condemnation of the United States Supreme Court, we must now have a just trial.

A simple explanation of the law says anything done outside of its constraints is not usable in court. The treatment of the prisoners in the case is a legal liability and I have a feeling that this trial will be as much about that as it is about finding justice for the thousands of people murdered in 2001.

The practices so aggressively carried out by the Bush Administration are now the greatest obstacle to finding justice for the grieving families.