Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "Jacob, when any prosecutor looks at a case, he has to put together a story: means, method, motive and opportunity. Now clearly a jailer has method and opportunity to kill a celebrity prisoner, but you do need to ask about motive. What was the benefit to the US in his death? What was the risk to the US in his life, considering he was safely in jail?"
The motives are clear:
(a) In the absence of a death penalty, the convenient deaths of prisoners will put more fear into the enemy.
(b) Prisoners can eventually be released alive, but corpses, once dead, stay that way. (Important exception: Jesus.)
The French had no motives for killing all those Algerian prisoners, many of them celebrities of a sort, as has been admitted to in the autobiography by the man who did it (bragging even). If you need to have the reasons for executing prisoners illegally (in a democracy), you can begin by reading his explanations. A link to the book is here: #reply-19676916
The short form argument for illegally executing prisoners is that "this is necessary in a war on terror." As Martha Stewart would say, "it is a good thing", and to hell with the legal details.
By the way, your argument is one that is used by the people who deny the Holocaust. What reason would the Germans have for killing people who they already had in concentration camps?
-- Carl |
