Thursday, August 03, 2006

Fears as US special courts plan widened

Jeffrey Smith, Washington
August 3, 2006

A DRAFT Bush Administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the authority of such commissions to people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism.

The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court in June, allows the defence secretary to add crimes at will to those under the military courts’ jurisdiction. The proposed legislation, being discussed at Senate hearings this week, is controversial because defendants would be denied many protections guaranteed by the civilian and military criminal justice systems.

Defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations or bar evidence obtained through coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors. An early draft of the bill leaked to the media last week has been modified in response to criticism from military lawyers. But the provisions allowing an expansion of the courts were retained.

Some experts say the new procedures provide no more protection than the ones struck down by the Supreme Court. John Hutson, the navy’s top uniformed lawyer from 1997 to 2000, said the rules would evidently allow the government to tell a prisoner: “We know you’re guilty. We can’t tell you why, but there’s a guy, we can’t tell you who, who told us something. We can’t tell you what, but you’re guilty.”

Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney-general during the Reagan administration, said after reviewing the leaked draft that “the theme of the Government seems to be: ‘They are guilty anyway, and therefore due process can be slighted.’ “ With these procedures, Mr Fein said, “there is a real danger of getting a wrong verdict” that would let a lower-echelon detainee “rot for 30 years” at Guantanamo Bay because of evidence contrived by personal enemies.

Administration officials said the procedures were warranted because the fight against terrorism required heavy reliance on classified information that could not be shared with the accused. No one at Guantanamo Bay has been tried to date, although some prisoners have been there since early 2002.