Guantanamo hearings 'shams,' lawyers find
From the Associated Press
November 17, 2006
NEWARK, N.J. — The U.S. military called no witnesses, withheld evidence
from detainees and usually reached a decision within a day as it
determined that hundreds of men detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were
"enemy combatants," a study to be released today has found.
The
analysis of transcripts and records by two lawyers for Guantanamo
detainees, aided by more than two dozen law students at Seton Hall
University here, found that hearings that determined whether a prisoner
should remain in custody gave the accused little opportunity to contest
allegations against him.
"These were not hearings. These were
shams," said Mark Denbeaux, an attorney and Seton Hall law professor
who along with his son, Joshua, wrote the report.
Their
report, based on an analysis of records of military hearings of 393
detainees, comes as the U.S. government seeks to severely restrict
detainee access to civilian courts, arguing that the Combatant Status
Review Tribunals should be their main legal recourse.
Navy
Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, dismissed the findings as
"recycled allegations," and noted the tribunals gave detainees an
opportunity to contest their designation as enemy combatants.
"It
is not a criminal trial and is not intended to determine guilt or
innocence," Gordon said. "Rather, it is an administrative process … to
confirm the status of enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo as part
of the global war on terrorism."
The military held the
tribunals for 558 detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in
southeast Cuba between July 2004 and January 2005, and decided that all
but 38 were enemy combatants. Handcuffed detainees appeared before a
panel of three officers with no defense attorney, only a military
"personal representative."
According to the report, the
representatives said nothing in the hearings 14% of the time and made
no "substantive" comments 30% of the time. In some cases, the
representative appeared to advocate the government's position, the
report said.
The military now holds about 430 men at
Guantanamo on suspicion of links to Al Qaeda or the Taliban and holds
Administrative Review Boards for them once a year.
The
Military Commissions Act, which President Bush signed Oct. 17, strips
non-U.S. citizens held under suspicion of being an enemy combatant of
their right to challenge their detention in civilian courts with
petitions of habeas corpus.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
