There’s also the fact that much of their evidence is “some guy in Syria”. You can’t bring that into a courtroom.
These people will never be convicted in a fair trial.
A plea deal where they spend the rest of their lives in prison gets us out of this stain on our democracy. And their only demands were that they could eat and pray as a group. They were never leaving prison.
But we can’t do the right thing because it’s political suicide. Dems tested the waters, and Republicans immediately jumped on it. Dems don’t trust voters to see the nuance through the Republican soundbites.
These aren’t the hijackers, btw. You know where they are.
This American Life and Serial have great podcasts about this.