NEW ORLEANS -- U.S. Sen. David Vitter has filed a bill that would prevent Guantanamo Bay detainees from being tried in U.S. criminal courts instead of military tribunals.
Vitter said the detainees, most of whom the government suspects to be terrorists and enemy combatants, shouldn't be treated as common criminals who would be prosecuted under U.S. criminal laws, but should be tried by a military tribunal.
The bill comes after the Obama administration announced it would try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged conspirators in a New York criminal court for the September 2001 terrorist attacks. If Vitter's bill passes, it would prevent the use of government funds to prosecute Guantanamo Bay detainees in the U.S. criminal system.
A letter Vitter sent to President Barack Obama warns of a threat to return to a pre-9/11 style of prosecuting terror suspects.
"In the 1990s, when Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist counterparts - including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - were orchestrating attacks around the world, we mistakenly tried those we captured in criminal courts instead of a military tribunal," Vitter writes in the letter, which you can read here. "After almost a decade of this style of justice, the horrific attacks of 9/11 fell upon our country."
Vitter writes that the decision sends a "mixed signal" to the rest of the world by going back on previous support for military tribunals.
"Mixed signals in the War on Terror are the last thing we need in our shared efforts to defeat the terrorists."
Earlier this year Obama signed an executive order that required the military prison to be shut down by January 2010, but Obama conceded Wednesday that the deadline is not going to be met.
