[Marxism] American military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn "unconscionable" detention

[Louis Proyect]

The Independent, October 27, 2007
Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn 'unconscionable' 
detention
By Leonard Doyle in Washington

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."