Europeans Stress Death Penalty at Terror Trial

The trial of five terrorists accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks is making headlines in Europe unlike those in the United States. Journalists from Italy, Germany, and Britain, along with Canada and Pakistan, were among those present when the trial began at the U.S. Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba on Thursday, June 5.

Perhaps predictably, in view of European hostility to the death penalty in the United States, the possibility of death sentences has been the common denominator of most European reports. Terror Trial in Guantánamo: The Prosecutor demands the Death Penalty reads the headline of an article in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine. The Swedish daily, Svenska Dagbladet, went a step further and anticipated the verdict with the headline He Will Be Executed referring to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged main planner of 9/11. The Norwegian Aftenposten carried a similar story with the headline Risking Death Penalty for 9/11 Attacks. The headline on a report on Sheikh Mohammed's testimony in the German daily Der Süddeutschen Zeitung was I Want to Become a Martyr.

The emphasis is different in the U.S. media. The main article in The New York Times about the trial on June 6 made little mention of the death penalty, referring to it only in the context of a quote from Sheikh Mohammed who “dared the Guantánamo tribunal to put him to death” and a warning from the judge against refusing a lawyer. While mentioning the death penalty in its June 6 article, The Washington Post’s main focus was on the use of torture in the interrogation of the suspects. After Sheikh Mohammed said he wanted martyrdom, some obvious references to the possible death penalty appeared in the U.S. media, such as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, but there were no death penalty headlines like those in Europe.

There were some common themes, however. Both The Washington Post and the Frankfurter Allgemeine compared the event to the post-World War II Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, which led to a number of death penalties, prison sentences, and some acquittals.

Some European reporters on the spot found different angles. A BBC correspondent reported that a razor wire fence around the courtroom provided “an unusual setting for an unusual process in which the US military is the jailer, judge and jury of the five detainees being tried.” On the trial's first day, the BBC correspondent said “It was clear that [Sheikh Mohammed] was not intimidated by his surroundings or the charges against him – he was enjoying the moment.” The Norwegian daily Dagbladet found it newsworthy that Sheikh Mohammed was unhappy with the courtroom drawings used to illustrate the trial; its headline translates as No, My Nose Is Not That Big.