Blind Eye to Justice

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The Enid News and Eagle, Enid, OK - Turning a blind eye to justice

Turning a blind eye to justice

Sifting through the news of the past week and trying to make some sense of it all …

Terror in the courts: The decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices in the federal court system in New York may be one of the more outrageous decisions by an administration that, in less than a year, has seemingly exceeded its quota of dumbfounding actions.

Let’s leave aside for a moment the fact bringing these suspects into our criminal courts, and giving them rights afforded to our own citizens, brings with it a never-ending list of concerns that includes a discovery process that could allow them access to classified information, exposing our security measures and potentially endangering our troops, there is also a simple matter of safety.

Just ask Louis Pepe.

Pepe was a guard in a federal prison facility when he was seriously injured in 2000 by a suspected terrorist being housed in our prison system who was awaiting trial for the planned bombing of an American embassy overseas. Mamdouh Mahmud Salim’s weapon was provided courtesy of a decision by a federal judge who ruled Salim was allowed to have hot sauce in his cell, based on religious grounds. All Salim and his cell mate did was use that very hot sauce as a mace, spraying it in the face and eyes of Pepe, then attacking him with a sharpened comb they drove through his left eye and into his brain. While laying there in a mass of blood, the prisoners attempted to sexually assault him. Their escape attempt failed, but Pepe was left blinded in one eye and to this day has permanent brain damage.

These detainees are difficult enough to handle for our military guards and now we are going to expose more civilian guards to these folks? And we are being told our federal court system can handle this.

Tell us, Mr. Holder, with such fine judicial decision-making such as that which led directly to the maiming of 42-year-old Louis Pepe, who will never fully recover, are we really supposed to feel confident about your decision? Who is going to protect us from our judges, yet alone the terrorists?

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