Guantanamo detainees are not allowed fair trials, charged the lawyers

LONDON, December 3 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The Pentagon has fired a team of uniformed military lawyers hired to defend detainees held at U.S. Guantanamo base, after they protested the unfair trial proceedings, a leading British newspaper reported Tuesday, December 3.

The first group of defense lawyers the Pentagon recruited for Guantanamo balked at rules, which insist, among other restrictions, that the government be allowed to listen in to any conversations between attorney and client, said the Guardian, citing a former military lawyer with good contacts in the U.S. military legal establishment.

"There was a circular that went out to military lawyers in the early spring of 2003 which said 'we are looking for volunteers' for defense counsel," said the ex-military lawyer.

"There was a selection process, and the people they selected were the right people, they had the right credentials, they were good lawyers," he said.

But the first day, he remembered, when they were being briefed on the dos and don'ts, at least a couple said: "You can't impose these restrictions on us because we can't properly represent our clients".

"When the group decided they weren't going to go along, they were relieved. They reported in the morning and got fired that afternoon," added the lawyer - who was not one of those sacked in the incident earlier this year.

Unhappiness

The Pentagon's recently set up Office of Military Commissions denied the report.

"That is not true, never happened," said its spokesman Major John Smith.

"The military commission is a tool of justice. I expect some of these individuals [on Guantanamo] will plead not guilty, and will be represented zealously by their lawyers," he added.

Yet the Guardian said it had learnt from a uniformed source with intimate knowledge of the mood among the current six-lawyer military defense team that there is deep unhappiness about the commission set-up.

"It's like you took military justice, gave it to a prosecutor and said, 'modify it any way you want'," the source said.

"The government would like to say we have done these commissions before. But what happened after [the Nazi cases] was the military justice system changed.

"What we have done is stupid. It is, I would say, an insult to the military, to the evolution of the military justice system. They want to take us back to 1942," he said.

Last month, Lord Justice Steyn, one of Britain's top judges, condemned the detentions at Guantanamo Bay as "a monstrous failure of justice", said the BBC.

The judge said the detainees were being deliberately held beyond the rule of law and the protection of any courts.

Reports over the weekend said London and Washington would strike a deal by Christmas for the return of nine British detainees to face justice back home.

Of the more than 600 detainees at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo, none has been charged with any crime, and none has had access to a lawyer, although some have been in captivity for two years.

But the U.S. has repeatedly promised that at least some of the detainees will be charged and tried by military commissions, an arcane form of tribunal based on long-disused models from the 1940s.

When charged, a detainee will be assigned a uniformed military defense lawyer.

The detainees have a theoretical right to a civilian lawyer, but the U.S. has placed financial and bureaucratic obstacles in the way of this, said the Guardian.

Meanwhile in a sudden reversal, the Pentagon on Tuesday allowed a U.S. citizen raised in Saudi Arabia and is being held as an "enemy combatant" access to a lawyer.

Legal experts said the move was an attempt to ward off U.S. Supreme Court review of the case.

After denying him access to counsel for two years, Pentagon said Yaser Esam Hamdi captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in late 2001, "will be allowed access to a lawyer subject to appropriate security restrictions," reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Under an executive order signed by President George Bush after 9-11, U.S. citizens who fought for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda cannot be tried by military tribunals or confined at Guantanamo Bay.

But the Pentagon has been holding them without charges and denying them access to counsel in the U.S., insisting that under the rules of war "enemy combatants" may be detained until the end of hostilities.

A federal judge ruled in May 2002 that "Hamdi must be allowed to meet with his attorney because of fundamental justice provided under the (U.S.) constitution".

Washington has come under heavy fire over its policies towards the detainees in Guantanamo bay.

The Supreme Court announced last month it would rule on the legality of holding foreigners at the military camp, after a series of cases had been filed on behalf of 16 of the prisoners, including Kuwaitis, Australian and British nationals.

Amnesty International condemned in May the U.S. breaches of international law under the cover of the war against terror.

Mohammad Sagheer, the first Pakistani released from Guantanamo filed suit against the U.S. for $10.4 million in compensation for the "torture and humiliation" he faced in detention.

Similar accusations were leveled by Australian Lawyer, Richard Bourke, who accused the U.S. of using "old-fashioned" torture techniques to force confessions out of Guantanamo detainees.