LOS ANGELES: Far too much of the recent debate over military tribunals has focused on the hypothetical question of where and how to try Osama bin Laden or others accused of direct involvement in the Sept 11 attacks. As the hunt continues it seems increasingly unlikely that Osama will be captured alive or that many suspects linked to the attacks will be Afghan citizens captured in Afghanistan.

The best legal solution is for Al Qaeda suspects captured in Spain, India and the United States to be bound over to US courts for criminal trials by seasoned federal prosecutors using legislatively mandated procedures to handle classified information. US courts have more than 200 years’ experience trying international crimes by pirates, hijackers and other international terrorists, and they have successfully tried and convicted transnational drug smugglers - such as Panama’s Manuel Noriega - as well as Al Qaeda members.

Historically, misguided Americans who have inserted themselves into foreign conflicts have similarly been prosecuted before US courts for violations of laws that criminalize private participation in foreign military expeditions.

Those who promote military tribunals have been misled by the O.J. Simpson fiasco to conclude that all US courts - whether civilian or military courts-martial - are inherently incapable of rendering full, fair and expeditious justice in such cases.

Precisely because foreign courts may refuse to extradite Al Qaeda suspects to new and untested US military tribunals, Congress should impose clear due-process limits on the use, rules and geographic reach of any such tribunals - limits that earlier this month US Attorney General John Ashcroft finally seemed ready to accept. A far different scenario should apply to the scores of war criminals - whether from the Taliban, the Northern Alliance or third-country nationals - who might be captured in Afghanistan in the days ahead.

However horrific their crimes against other Afghan citizens might be, they have little to do with the United States and should not be adjudicated by US courts that have little interest or expertise in the decades-old Afghan conflict. Wherever possible, third-party combatants should be sent back to the country of their nationality to face national punishment consistent with international standards.

Afghan violators, such as Mullah Mohammed Omar and his close deputies, should be given treatment similar to that given brutal rebel leader Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone: arrest, humanitarian treatment in custody, permanent exclusion from further governmental activity, no amnesty for war crimes or crimes against humanity and, eventually, a local trial for those crimes.

The precise shape of the emerging Afghan judicial system, created under the transitional administration now headed by interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, remains to be determined. Whatever happens, United Nations transitional support and involvement will be necessary to stabilize the post-conflict environment, to address pressing humanitarian needs of returning refugees, to promote the Bonn process of building a representative post-Taliban government and to address justice, accountability and truth-telling about past human rights abuses by all parties to the Afghan conflict.

The US should adopt a simple, clear division of labour: US prosecutors and judges should try crimes committed against Americans on US soil, while experienced foreign and UN lawyers should address crimes committed against Afghans on Afghan soil.—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times.