Minn. judge looks back on JFK assassination, justice in Pakistan

Clinton, Tunheim
President Clinton meets with members of the Assassination Records Review Board in the Oval Office of the White House Wednesday Sept. 30, 1998. Counterclockwise from the president are chairman John Tunheim, Laura Denk, Tracy Shycoff, Eileen Sullivan, White House Deputy Chief of Staff John Podesta, Anna Kasten Nelson, William Joyce and Kermit Hall. The board investigated the assassination of President Kennedy 1963.
AP Photo/White House

After years of ignoring or abetting terrorists on its soil and losing thousands of citizens to terrorist-related violence, Pakistan is building a justice system to address terrorism and getting advice from experts like U.S. District Judge John Tunheim.

Tunheim has just returned from a workshop co-hosted by Pakistan and the United Nations.

More on Pakistan's plan from The Washington Post:

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Zafarullah Khan, Pakistan's justice secretary, said the new ordinance will lead to a "quick disposal of justice" while also abiding by Pakistan's constitution.

The measure clarifies that the military, working with police, can make arrests without obtaining a warrant for 20 different crimes, including use of bombs and kidnapping or killing government officials.

Noncitizens accused of crimes against the state can be labeled "enemy aliens" and detained indefinitely, although cases will be reviewed periodically. Pakistani citizens can be held for up to 90 days if there are "grounds to infer" they were "acting in a manner prejudicial to the integrity, security, defense" of the country.

He joins The Daily Circuit to talk about the challenges that confront a country that experienced more than 1,500 terrorist attacks last year. He'll also discuss his former role as chair of the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board as we approach the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's death.

In an interview with the Pioneer Press, Tunheim looked back at the review and said "the only evidence that's admissible in court — points all of its fingers toward [sniper Lee Harvey] Oswald" acting alone.

"I think people don't want to believe that a 24-year-old misfit with deluded notions of grandeur of some kind could walk into an awful, below-minimum-wage job with a rifle, poked it out a window and shot the leader of the free world in the head," he told the Pioneer Press. "People want to believe that somehow some large conspiracy in some way enhances the mystique of President Kennedy."