Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guant

Judge Halts War-Crime Trial at Guant

They’re calling this decision a setback for Bush’s policy.
It’s definitely a plus for democracy.

Judge Says Detainees’ Trials Are Unlawful
By Carol D. Leonnig and John Mintz for The Washington Post.

The special trials established to determine the guilt or innocence of prisoners at the U.S. military prison in Cuba are unlawful and cannot continue in their current form, a federal judge ruled yesterday.
In a setback for the Bush administration, U.S. District Judge James Robertson found that detainees at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may be prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions and therefore entitled to the protections of international and military law — which the government has declined to grant them.
The decision came in a lawsuit filed by the first alleged al Qaeda member facing trial before what the government calls “military commissions.” The decision upends — for now — the administration’s strategy for prosecuting hundreds of alleged al Qaeda and Taliban detainees accused of terrorist crimes.
Human rights advocates, foreign governments and the detainees’ attorneys have contended that the rules governing military commissions are unfairly stacked against the defendants. But Robertson’s ruling is the first by a federal judge to assert that the commissions, which took nearly two years to get underway, are invalid.
The Bush administration denounced the ruling as wrongly giving special rights to terrorists and announced that it will ask a higher court for an emergency stay and reversal of Robertson’s decision. Military officers at Guantanamo immediately halted commission proceedings in light of the ruling.
“We vigorously disagree. . . . The judge has put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war,” said Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo. “The Constitution entrusts to the president the responsibility to safeguard the nation’s security. The Department of Justice will continue to defend the president’s ability and authority under the Constitution to fulfill that duty.”
Robertson ruled that the military commissions, which Bush authorized the Pentagon to revive after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, are neither lawful nor proper. Under commission rules, the government could, for example, exclude people accused of terrorist acts from some commission sessions and deny them access to evidence, which the judge said would violate basic military law.
Robertson said the government should have held special hearings for detainees to determine whether they qualified for prisoner-of-war protections when they were captured, as required by the Geneva Conventions. Instead, the administration declared the captives “enemy combatants” and decided to afford them some of the protections spelled out by the Geneva accords.
Robertson ordered that until the government provides the hearing, it can prosecute the detainees only in courts-martial, under long-established military law.
Robertson issued his decision in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a detainee captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and accused of being a member of al Qaeda. Robertson’s opinion is expected to set the standard for treatment of other detainees before military commissions. So far, four Guantanamo Bay detainees have been ordered to stand trial…
Kevin Barry, a retired Coast Guard judge who is critical of the Pentagon’s legal justifications for the Guantanamo Bay detentions, called Robertson’s ruling a “remarkable” decision that “will give heart to all who think the rule of law should apply in the Afghanistan conflict.” Barry said the war on terrorism is the first U.S. war since the Geneva Conventions’ adoption in 1949 in which the government has not accorded POW status to enemy fighters.
“Even the Viet Cong, who were farmers by day and fighters at night, were accorded that status,” he said. “The judge got these issues right.”

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A makeshift double-wide trailer is the “court,” and three anonymous military officers constitute the “judge and jury.”
Prisoners are not allowed proper representation by attorneys.
Translators seem to be provided, but they are not doing an adequate job. Prisoners who refuse to attend their tribunal hearing are sentenced in absentia.
But no one’s listening to what the prisoners have to say anyway. They are not allowed to know the names of anyone on the panel or see any of the “evidence” against them, because it’s classified.
The U.S. used to set the bar for humanitarian treatment of P.O.W.’s, now it’s setting the standard for modern day fascism.
This is not what the Supreme Court meant when it declared that “a state of war is not a blank check for the president,” and said that “enemy combatants” must be allowed to challenge their detention before a “judge” or “other neutral decision maker.” (Does anyone have the link to the decision itself?)
The Shrub Administration is arguing that the Supreme Court should reject the numerous petitions filed on behalf of Guantanamo prisoners because these military tribunals satisfy the Supreme Court’s requirements. But this quote from Guantanamo’s Captain Jamison proves beyond a reasonable doubt that these “administrative procedures” do not qualify as criminal courts:

Captain Jamison said the tribunals were administrative procedures and thus did not have to meet standards of regular criminal proceedings.

These are the kinds of conditions you used to hear about happening in third world countries — to Americans. These are the situations that the Geneva Convention was created to address. This is a travesty of Justice, to say the least.

Guant