Tuesday, February 13, 2007

No justice in Germany

This is the reason we have GiTMO: the world does not know how to treat terrorists. They should be treated like the following:

1 - a. If caught on the battlefield: may be of use, interrogated and then if they are useful and provide information; tried by a Tribunal and sentenced based on the support and information they give.
--- b. If caught on the battlefield and of no use; IAW the Geneva Convention on unlawful combatants - shot. Ok, a quick Tribunal in the field then shot if that will make you happy.
--- c. If caught on the battlefield: may be of use, interrogated and then if he/she is a good terrorist and keeps his/her mouth shut - given to a Tribunal and then shot in line with 1.a and 1.b.

2 - If captured overseas or here in the U.S., not on the battlefield, taken into our inefficient but usually effective court system and tried: using the Oklahoma Timmy standard. If "allies" won't extradite - play hardball. Get them before they get away. If they get away - find someone at Blackwater that needs extra cash. Why so harsh on my part? I have no use for these people.
A German court on Monday approved parole for one of the last jailed members of the Red Army Faction in a case that has revived painful memories of the left-wing terrorist group's 1970s heyday.

Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, will be released March 27 after serving 24 years of a life sentence for multiple murders, the Stuttgart state court ruled. Mohnhaupt was convicted in 1985 of involvement in nine murders, including those of West German chief federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the head of the country's industry federation.

She was given five life sentences on the murder charges and convictions on other counts. Those included attempted murder for her part in a 1981 rocket-propelled grenade attack on the car of U.S. Gen. Frederick Krosen — then the commander of U.S. forces in Europe — which injured both the general and his wife.
This is where you really feel that Germany is just lost.
The court decided Mohnhaupt fulfilled the conditions of her sentence and no longer posed a threat to society, court spokeswoman Josefine Koeblitz said.

The decision was made "according to legal conditions and was not an act of clemency," Koeblitz said.
Really; what has she shown us in the past?
Mohnhaupt was captured early in her involvement with the Red Army Faction in Berlin in 1972 and jailed for several years. Released in 1977, she immediately went back to the group and played a key role in the trail of death it left later that year, which became known as the "German Autumn."

She was arrested again in then-communist Yugoslavia in 1978, but allowed to go six months later.

She was finally captured by West German authorities on Nov. 11, 1982, as she went to an arms cache in woods near Frankfurt, which had been staked out by a special police unit for two weeks after they received a tip from locals who had stumbled upon it.

This, among other reasons, is why with garden variety terrorists - once they run away to some hiding place (AKA Allah's waiting room) perhaps it is best to rely on the LGB, Barrett, or M21 to save us all money. Why risk the lives of good men to take prisoner those who will just one day go free?

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