The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 72/No. 9      March 3, 2008

 
Pentagon seeks military trials
for six ‘enemy combatants’
(front page)
 
BY DOUG NELSON  
The Defense Department announced February 11 that it has charged and is seeking the death penalty for six prisoners held at the prison camp at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba. After holding the men for five years without charges, the government is pressing to try them by military commission.

The Pentagon-appointed convening authority for military commissions, Susan Crawford, will now decide whether the case against the six will be heard by a military commission and whether the death penalty can be sought. If the case goes to trial, it will take place in Guantánamo.

The six are accused of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The most well-known, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is accused of planning and organizing the attacks. The second, Walid bin Attash, is accused of running an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan where two of the September 11 hijackers were trained. Ramzi Binalshibh is accused of helping find flight schools for the hijackers. Two others, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, are accused of providing financial assistance to the hijackers. Mohamed al-Kahtani is said to have been denied entry into the United States in 2001 with $2,800 in cash on his person and a phone number associated with al-Hawsawi on his flight itinerary.  
 
Military commission
Under a 2006 law, the members of a military commission are appointed military officers. The judge is selected by the secretary of defense. The prosecution can use hearsay and secret evidence.

The defense lawyers are appointed military attorneys. If defendants can afford it, they are entitled to hire a civilian lawyer, but that lawyer must be eligible for a government security clearance at the “secret” or higher level. All discussion between defendants and their lawyers is monitored by the government, and all the lawyers’ mail and notes are given to the military.

In 2001, president George Bush announced the formation of military tribunals to try those labeled “enemy combatants.” The tribunals denied the accused constitutional protections of the U.S. judicial system. The executive decree received criticism and opposition from a range of capitalist politicians, news media, and law professionals. No tribunals happened.

Instead, hundreds of people remained jailed without charges at Guantánamo. In March, Australian-born David Hicks was convicted after plea-bargaining to serve nine months in an Australian prison for “supporting terrorism” after more than five years in Guantánamo.

The Supreme Court ruled the executive order establishing military tribunals unconstitutional in 2006. That same year Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, a modified version of the Bush administration’s original design.  
 
Use of torture
This act removes the constitutional right of due process for persons the president deems to be enemy combatants, allowing the government to imprison people indefinitely without charges. It also allows the use of statements by defendants that were, in the words of the American Civil Liberties Union, “literally beaten out of a witness,” as long as that happened before Dec. 30, 2005. Under the act, the president decides what does and doesn’t constitute torture in interrogations.

Guantánamo base commander Rear Adm. Mark Buzby recently admitted in a court filing that several years’ worth of video recordings of interrogations there had been overwritten. “We’ll simply never know whether these videotapes recorded torture,” said David Remes, a lawyer who represents Gua 0ntánamo detainees. The military was issued a court order in 2005 to preserve such evidence.

The inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners at the Guantánamo camp has generated criticism from defenders of democratic rights, human rights organizations, and others since the jail opened in 2002. Prisoners have engaged in hunger strikes and been subject to force feeding. Three prisoners hung themselves in June 2006. At that time, the military acknowledged 41 suicide attempts. In 2003 alone, the military acknowledged 350 “self-harm” incidents, including 120 “hanging gestures.”

Of the 778 prisoners kept at Guantánamo, fewer than 300 remain. Most have been sent back to their country of origin without ever being charged. The Defense Department plans to try about 80 by military commission.
 
 
Related articles:
N.Y. cop ‘terror’ squads, dogs to patrol subways
U.S. Senate approves spy bill
Gov’t retries Liberty City 7 on ‘terror’ charges  
 
 
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