New round of Guantanamo trials criticized

The prospect of the United States charging Guantanamo Bay detainees before new military tribunals unleashed a torrent of protests Thursday among human rights groups.

The New York Times reported that Defence Secretary Robert Gates would soon lift an order blocking new cases from being initiated against detainees in special courts known as military commissions, a ban President Barack Obama ordered on his first day in office.

The Pentagon would not immediately confirm the report.

According to the Times, three detainees will be referred for new charges, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of having organized the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors in Yemen.

Nashiri is among three Guantanamo detainees U.S. authorities acknowledge were tortured. He was subjected to the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding, as well as threatened with a gun and a power drill.

"Trying Guantanamo detainees in a system that is designed to ensure convictions, not fair trials, strikes a major blow to any efforts to restore the rule of law," the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.

It urged the Obama administration to try the suspects in U.S. federal courts, which have "well-established rules of procedure and evidence."

The decision to resort to military commissions for cases such as Nashiri's "raises serious questions about whether commissions are being used as a forum to hide the use of torture and base convictions on evidence that would be too untrustworthy to be admitted in any real court," the ACLU added.

About 30 detainees are at the Guantanamo prison, a U.S. naval base Obama had hoped to close within his first year in office. But he later backpedalled in the face of congressional opposition.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents some Guantanamo detainees, said it was "very disappointed" in Obama, predicting the move will "cost the United States foreign popular and diplomatic support that is essential to legitimate law enforcement efforts against terrorism."

The military commissions, launched in 2006 under former president George W. Bush and reformed in 2009 by Obama, "serve as a secondary system of justice for the Arab and Muslim men subject to them and have been repeatedly discredited," it added.

Joining the chorus of critics was Human Rights First, which cited Obama's own defence one month ago of using federal courts to try terrorism defendants.


(2011-1-20/edmontonjournal)