US guards with a detainee in Guantanamo

CAIRO, July 28 (IslamOnline.net) – A few days before its launching, Human Rights Watch blasted the "seriously flawed" Pentagon planned tribunals to review the Guantanamo detainees' status, saying it will not give detainees a fair chance to challenge their detention.

"They are not set up to be impartial, they will place severe limits on detainees' ability to make their claims, and they are predicated on the Pentagon's erroneous belief that all enemy combatants at Guantanamo can still be held under the laws of war," said the watchdog on its website.

The New York-based rights group vocalized deep concern at Pentagon's attempts  to "restrict the scope of court review by creating tribunals that will largely confirm the status quo."

Wendy Patten, the US advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, also blasted the Pentagon's trials to control detainees.

"The Pentagon is still trying to have complete control over the detainees’ fate," he said.

"It hopes the new tribunals will deter careful scrutiny by the courts."

"These tribunals presume that all of the detainees are enemy combatants. But that’s the very issue the tribunals are supposed to be deciding," Patten stressed.

Right To Lawyer

The HRW asserted that "there is no legitimate reason to deny detainees the assistance of a lawyer in this first opportunity to contest the basis of their detention."

Under the rules, each detainee will be assigned a military officer as a "personal representative" before the panel.

"The military order creating these tribunals explicitly designates the detainees as enemy combatants, consistent with the position that senior US military and administration officials have maintained for over two and a half years.

"To find that a detainee is not an enemy combatant, military officers on the panel will have to accept the claims put forward by a detainee over the stated position of their superiors," the right watchdog said.

The Pentagon created the tribunals after the Supreme Court endorsed late last month the right of prisoners at Guantanamo prison to challenge their captivity in American courts.

Amnesty International condemned in May last year the US breaches of international law in Guantanamo under the cloak of its so-called global war on terror.

Also in January last year, Amnesty asked Washington to resolve the "legal limbo" of the detainees, slamming its continuing defiance of international law.