To be fair, he was refusing to face trial. And he is expected to plead guilty, so he isn't innocent.
That said, there may be legitimate questions about whether the United States should be entitled to exercise jurisdiction over foreign nationals who are not physically present in the jurisdiction for national security offences.
And so I think even with a guilty please, there ought to be a requirement for the prosecution to prove the case. Maybe lower the bar a little bit, but not much. And that is indeed how pleas work most places.
Few jurisdictions have US-style plea bargains where the prosecutor can negotiate large "discounts" to the potential maximum sentencing and get judges to agree.
To me, a country that allows that and where they are frequently taken does not have a functioning justice system.
There's also a significant difference with respect to the coercion when sentences are long, and when the possible variation in sentence length is huge, and the US stands out as particularly bad with respect to both of those factors as well.
The question who is guilty by a US court does not determine the guilt of an individual in any relevant or moral way under these extreme circumstances. It just indicates if you are part of the system or if you rather are uncomfortable and need to be silenced.
Yes the killed journalists were in a country that was being attacked by a foreign nation. This does not make it their fault that they were murdered.
While this might be a common occurrence in war, it does not excuse anything: if wars are fought in a way that these kill innocent people then they should not be fought in the first place. Something is not morally excusable only because it is expected when done.
Thirdly, sure the crew was investigated (here i admittedly only know what wiki has to offer) but there is no known outcome of said internal investigation.
