Putting Rules on Tribunals -- Finally

[Timber Loftis]

NY Times.

November 8, 2004
U.S. Judge Halts Military Trial of Qaeda Suspect at Guantánamo
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - A federal judge today halted the Guantánamo Bay trial of a Yemeni prisoner suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda, ruling that the special military tribunals like the one the suspect is facing at the naval base in Cuba are contrary to principles of American justice.

The ruling, handed down this afternoon by Judge James Robertson of Federal District Court in Washington, halted the trial of the suspect, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the moment news of it reached the military authorities at the base.

Judge Robertson sharply rebuked the Bush administration for its position that because the several hundred Guantánamo detainees have been classified as "enemy combatants," they are not entitled to the protections normally given to prisoners of war.

"The government has asserted a position starkly different from the positions and behavior of the United States in previous conflicts, one that can only weaken the United States' own ability to demand application of the Geneva Conventions to Americans captured during armed conflicts abroad," the judge wrote in his 47-page opinion.

Judge Robertson said lawyers who follow the Guantánamo cases have found "examples of the way other governments have already begun to cite the United States' Guantánamo policy to justify their own repressive policies."

Mr. Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan late in 2001 during the American military campaign to oust the Taliban following the terror attacks of Sept. 11. In 2003, the Defense Department announced that he had been found suitable for trial by special military commission because he was suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda "or was otherwise involved in terrorism directed against the United States."

But Judge Robertson said today that there is a built-in unfairness in the special military tribunals, which, unlike regular courts-martial, severely limit a defendant's access to evidence being used to try him. The Bush administration has defended such secrecy procedures on national-security grounds, but the judge was not persuaded.

"A tribunal set up to try, possibly convict, and punish a person accused of crime that is configured in advance to permit the introduction of evidence and the testimony of witnesses out of the presence of the accused is indeed substantively different from a regularly convened court-martial," the judge wrote.

What happens next at Guantánamo was not clear this afternoon. "We are going through the ruling now to determine what it means," a public affairs officer for the military commissions, Maj. Lee Reynolds of the Army, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

[shamrock_uk]

I think this is a related article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3994183.stm

It seems to have a little more detail on the man himself.

[ 11-08-2004, 06:59 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Timber Loftis]

I've got a feeling it sucks to be Lt. Cmdr. Swift these days. I wonder if he still lives on base??

[Aerich]

Good, it's about time a judge with guts stepped up to say it. Enough of the shaky linguistic distinctions!

Here's a four-point summary of his judicial opinion.

1) You say you are fighting a War on Terror.
2) You have captured people that you say are your enemies in this War on Terror.
3) You say that these "enemy combatants" that you captured in the course of this War on Terror are not "prisoners of war".
4) What the heck are you trying to pull?