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Military tribunalsl/ CSRTs page rev. 29 Sept 2008
29 Sept 2008: In the continuing military commission procedures against Salim Hamden, Osama bin Laden's former driver, prosecutors have moved for reconsideration of Hamdan's sentence because the sentence included credit for time served. Previously, JAG defense counsel submitted a motion stipulating Bush administration civilian manipulation of the millitary commission procedures for political gain in the '08 elections. Click here for background report from the Miami Herald. Click here for a follow-up report by Ross Tuttle of The Nation. [Ed. note: includes more balanced reporting than the title implies.]
9 May 2008: Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, senior Pentagon official in the Office of Military Commissions, has been disqualified from any further role in the military tribunal proceedings for Salim Hamdan, previously scheduled to begin in June 2008. Click here for ScotusBlog analysis, "War Crimes Trials and Outside Pressure."
"Lawfare and Legal Ethics in Guantanamo" by David Luban, University Professor and Professor of Law and Philosophy, Georgetown university Law Center, This article, forthcoming in Stanford Law Review, Vol. 60, Issue 6, is about government policies that have (intentionally or not) made it more difficult for lawyers to provide legal representation to Guantanamo prisoners. Luban distinguishes three types of counsel: civilian lawyers representing detainees in habeas cases, civilian defensecounsel before the military commissions, and military (JAG) defense counsel for detainees brought before military commissions. Anecdotal information as well as legal analysis and policy discussion.
10 March 2008: Human Rights First (HRF) report: Coerced Evidence Contaminating Judicial System, Undermining Terrorist Prosecutions. This comprehensive report charges that the introduction of coerced evidence, obtained through the use of official cruelty, into military commission trials at Guantanamo Bay is rapidly contaminating the justice system and jeopardizing the prospects for the successful prosecution of terrorists. Click here for a summary of the report in HRF's media alert.
27 Feb 2008: Letter from the American Bar Association (ABA) to the President expressing the strong concerns of the ABA that the military commission system at Guantanamo does not adhere to established principles of due process fundamental to our nation's concept of justice.
25 Feb 2008. Letter signed by 34 national bar associations from all over the world, calling for immediate closing of the Guantanamo Bay facility and repatriation of Omar Khadr, a Canadian imprisoned there for an event that occured when he was 15 years old.
Feb 2008: "A Call to Protect Civilian Justice: Beware the Creep of Military Tribunals," an American Constitution Cociety issue brief by Anthony F. Renzo, Professor of Law, Vermont Law School.
21 Feb 2008: Provocatively-titled, fact-based article explains the civilian control of the military tribunal process by policital operatives in the Dept of Defense and the White House: "The Great Guantanamo Puppet Theater" by Scott Horton.
11 Feb 2008: Dept of Defense charged 6 detainees with murder for the 9/11 attack in the United States and referred the case to the convening authority (seeking the death penalty). Here are the official charge sheets from DoD here (pgs. 24-88 list the names of all 2,973 killed in the 9/11 attacks). Here's the DoD press release about the action.
7 Feb 2008. New report by Prof. Mark Denbeaux and his associates and colleagues at Seton Hall University School of Law, with implications for the impending 9/11 military tribunal proceedings: "Interrogation and Videotaping of Detainees in Guantanamo" includes documentation for the report's premise that more than 24,000 interrogations have been conducted at Guantanamo Bay and that each of them has been videotaped. Some of the video tapes have been destroyed, as revealed by the military's meticulous records. See Seton Hall U. press release with summary of the project's findings.
Dec. 2007. HRF report on Mil Comm Proposed Rules
18 Jan. 2007. Manual for Military Commissions, submitted by the Secretary of Defense to Congress in accordance with the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Miliary Commissions Act:
Military Commissions Act of 2006 (PL 109-366) ("MCA").
Oct. 2006: Q&A backgrounder about military commissions by Human Rights Watch staff, including: What are military commissions? How do the military commissions authorized by the MCA differ from those struck down by the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld? What rules of the MCA are of primary concern?
CRS report: The Military Commissions Act of 2006: Analysis of Procedural Rules and Comparison with Previous Department of Defense rules and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (CRS: RL33688)
Remedial legislation currently on a back burner in Congress: Restoring the Constitution Act (S. 576; H.R. 1415). Would amend certain provisions of the Military Commissions Act antithetical to prevention of torture and abusive conduct. Section-by-section description here.
Combat Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs):
4 April 2008: Excellent legal summary of oral argument in Parhat v. Gates (D.C. Cir. 06-1397), the first civilian court review of the Pentagon's CSRT system of labeling a G'Bay detainee an "enemy combatant," leading to continued detention. Huzaifa Parhat is a Chinese Uighur, a persecuted Muslim minority in China. Includes link to transcript.
1 Feb. 2008. [re: federal court appeal of enemy combatant designation, determined through the CSRT process.] In Bismullah v. Gates (06-1197) and Parhat v. Gates (06-1397), the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals en banc upheld a three-judge appeals panel determination about what evidence of enemy combatant status the government must turn over to the reviewing federal court (and thus to defense counsel). The government had resisted turning over to the court all information about the appealing detainee's case, instead proffering only the evidence that had been presented to the military panel making the initial determination. The court ruled that the government must present all information in its possession about the detainee.
Report: The No-Hearing Hearings - CSRT: The Modern Habeas Corpus? An Analysis of the Proceedings of the Government's Combat Status Review Tribunals at Guantanamo, by Mark Denbeaux, Professor, Seton University School of Law, and Joshua Denbeaux, Esq. (Counsel to two Guantanamo detainees).
7 July 2004: Order of Defense Secty. Donald Rumsfeld establishing CSRTs.
Cases pending before military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay:
Omar Khafy is a Canadian national who was wounded and captured in Afghanistan at age 15, and was transferred to Guantanamo Bay (in 2002). The son of Ahmed Said Khadr, a former financier for Osama bin Laden who was killed in 2003 during a raid on suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Mr. Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. army sergeant. He has been detained at Guantanamo since the fall of 2002, held as an adult and treated as a high value intelligence detainee. He is charged as an enemy combatant and with killing one U.S. special forces officer and blinding another with a hand granade in an Afghan firefight, among other charges. Click here for Human Rights background material about Khafy.
Charges against Khafy, previously dismissed on a procedural question were reinstated in November 2007. His defense attorney moved to dismiss war crimes and other charges, on the grounds that child soldiers are guaranteed special protection under a protocol, ratified by the United States in 2002, of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
As of 13 March 2008, his military tribunal process faced yet another long delay, perhaps months long, when Khafy refused to cooperate in an appearance before the tribunal and his military defense counsel withdrew because of completion of counsel's military service. |
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