[Ppnews] Another Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks

[Political Prisoner News]

<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3101949.ece>http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3101949.ece

28 October 2007 14:44


Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn 'unconscionable' detention




By Leonard Doyle in Washington




Published: 27 October 2007

An American military lawyer and veteran of dozens 
of secret Guantanamo tribunals has made a 
devastating attack on the legal process for 
determining whether Guantanamo prisoners are "enemy combatants".

The whistleblower, an army major inside the 
military court system which the United States has 
established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the 
detention of one prisoner, a hospital 
administrator from Sudan, as "unconscionable".

His critique will be the centrepiece of a hearing 
on 5 December before the US Supreme Court when 
another attempt is made to shut the prison down. 
So nervous is the Bush administration of the 
latest attack – and another Supreme Court ruling 
against it – that it is preparing a whole new 
system of military courts to deal with those still imprisoned.

The whistleblower's testimony is the most serious 
attack to date on the military panels, which were 
meant to give a fig- leaf of legitimacy to the 
interrogation and detention policies at Naval 
Base at Guantanamo Bay. The major has taken part in 49 status review panels.

"It's a kangaroo court system and completely 
corrupt," said Michael Ratner, the president of 
the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which is 
co-ordinating investigations and appeals lawsuits 
against the government by some 1,000 lawyers. 
"Stalin had show trials, but at Guantanamo they 
are not even show trials because it all takes place in secret."

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held for 
558 detainees at the Guantanamo in 2004 and 2005. 
All but 38 detainees were determined to be "enemy 
combatants" who could be held indefinitely 
without charges. Detainees were not represented 
by a lawyer and had no access to evidence. The 
only witnesses they could call were other so-called "enemy combatants".

The army major has said that in the rare 
circumstances in which it was decided that the 
detainees were no longer enemy combatants, senior 
commanders ordered another panel to reverse the 
decision. The major also described "acrimony" 
during a "heated conference" call from Admiral 
McGarragh, who reports to the Secretary of the US 
Navy, when a the panel refused to describe 
several Uighur detainees as enemy combatants. 
Senior military commanders wanted to know why 
some panels considering the same evidence would 
come to different findings on the Uighurs, 
members of a Muslim minority in China.

When the whistleblower suggested over the phone 
that inconsistent results were "good for the 
system ... and would show that the system was 
working correctly", Admiral McGarragh, he said, 
had no response. The latest criticism emerged 
when lawyers investigating the case of a Sudanese 
hospital administrator, Adel Hamad, who has been 
held for five years, came across a "stunning" 
sworn statement from a member of the military 
panel. The officer they interviewed was so 
frightened of retaliation from the military that 
they would not allow their name to be used in the 
statement, nor to reveal whether the person was a man or woman.

Two other military lawyers have also gone public. 
In June, Army Lt-Col Stephen Abraham, a 26-year 
veteran in US military intelligence, became the 
first insider to publicly fault the proceedings. 
In May last year, Lt-Com Matthew Diaz was 
sentenced to six months in prison and dismissed 
from the military after he sent the names of all 
551 men at the prison to a human rights group.

William Teesdale, a British-born lawyer 
investigating Mr Hadad's case, said he was 
certain of his client's innocence, having tracked 
down doctors who worked with him at an Afghan 
hospital. "Mr Hamad is an innocent man, and he is 
not the only one in Guantanamo."



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