nanosecondinvestments - 11 May 2008 09:57 AM
via PuffHo
In a rebuke, a military judge has disqualified a key Pentagon general from any role overseeing the Guantánamo trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, saying he doubted the general’s impartiality in the case.
The judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, ordered the Pentagon’s general counsel to assign a new official to oversee the trial in place of Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W.Hartmann, the Defense Department’s legal adviser for military commissions.
My goodness such hand wringing. But shouldn’t they be more concerned if the guy was NOT replaced. The replacement shows that the maximum effort is being expended in review and process to do the best trial possible.
Clearly the replaced person is not being left there to enable a kangaroo court process.
So now it is being spun that review and oversight is bad.
It might be that some have solid objections.
RIGHTS-US: Guantánamo Suspects Face Death, Fair Trial Doubts
By William Fisher
NEW YORK, Feb 19 (IPS) - As the U.S. moves towards holding death-sentence trials for six Guantánamo Bay detainees alleged to have plotted the Sep. 11 attacks, legal scholars and human rights advocates are questioning not only the six-year-long process and timing of the charges, but also whether the accused could ever receive fair trials.
On Feb. 11, charges were issued against the six, including the chief alleged organizer of the Sep. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The U.S. military outlined 168 charges, including conspiracy, murder, attacking civilians, terrorism and supporting terrorism.
All six accused will be tried together by military commissions—highly- controversial criminal courts run by the U.S. armed forces—at the U.S. Naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They will be the first trials of detainees held at Guantánamo.
One former detainee, David Hicks from Australia, pleaded guilty in March 2007 to providing support to a terrorist organization. He was sentenced to seven years in jail to be served in his home country. Given time off for his five years in captivity, he was released in December 2007.
Since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan in 2002, more than 800 detainees have been imprisoned in Guantánamo. Hundreds have been released without charges. But about 275 are still held, 80 of whom the U.S. has said it expects to put on trial.
Before being taken to Guantánamo, five of the accused were held without charges or legal representation by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) in secret prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The George W. Bush administration has acknowledged that at least one of the defendants, Mohammed, was subjected to waterboarding while in custody.
Waterboarding—simulated drowning—has been long acknowledged as torture. The newly appointed U.S. Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, has recently declined to say whether he agreed. But after World War II, the U.S. prosecuted Japanese soldiers for using the practice against its prisoners of war.
Vice President Dick Cheney has vigorously defended waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, referring to them as “a tougher programme for a very few tougher customers”.
Military authorities have declared that no evidence obtained through torture would be used in the up-coming trials. But many legal experts, including Columbia University law professor Scott Horton, have expressed scepticism about whether convictions can be obtained without using the evidence extracted under torture.
Horton told IPS that the timing of the trials was “politically motivated” to strengthen the Republican Party’s chances in the 2008 presidential election. Trying the accused by military commissions was likely to result in “a series of show trials”, he added.
This view was shared by Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a New York-based legal advocacy group, which represents one of the defendants, Mohammad al Qahtani, who has been held at Guantánamo for six years and claims to have been tortured during that time.
The military commission system had “none of the guarantees” of trials by normal civilian courts, Ratner told IPS.
He added: “Coerced and hearsay evidence can be used. There is no jury, only a group of military officers and a judge appointed by the Bush administration. Much of the trial can be held in secret and the defendant does not get to see all of the evidence. After this sham process, the defendant, if convicted, can receive the death penalty. There is a barbarity to the actions of the Bush administration that is without precedent.”
Many military lawyers have expressed similar views.
The former head prosecutor at Guantánamo, Colonel Morris Davis, resigned when he was placed directly under the command of the General Counsel of the Department of Defence—a principal architect of the military commissions system.
Lifelong Republican John Hutson, a retired Judge Advocate General—the military’s top lawyer—has become a leading voice among former military officials criticizing the Bush administration’s policies on Guantánamo Bay. Hutson has opposed torture and the precedent it would set for future conflicts.
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A Pentagon legal advisor and spokesman, Air Force Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, has said the trials would be “as open as possible”. The accused would have the right to call their own witnesses, cross-examine prosecution witnesses and see the evidence presented against them.
“There will be no secret trials,” he has declared. The 12-member military commission would have to pass unanimous verdicts.
But Hartmann has declined to answer questions about the admissibility of evidence obtained by waterboarding.
