NY Times examines Guantanamo detainee review boards: 'Often fallen short'
RAW STORY
Published:
Saturday December 30, 2006
 A New York Times examination of review boards for Guantanamo detainees set for Sunday's paper finds that they have "often fallen short."
"Under a law passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in October, [a converted trailer in the American military detention center] here may be as close to a courtroom as most Guantanamo prisoners ever get," Tim Golden writes.
A White House Fact Sheet for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, signed into law on October 17, states, "The Military Commissions Authorized By This Legislation Are Lawful, Fair, And Necessary...With The Military Commissions Act, The Legislative And Executive Branches Have Agreed On A System That Meets Our National Security Needs."
"In the months after 9/11, the President authorized a system of military commissions to try foreign terrorists accused of war crimes," the White House Fact Sheet continues. "These commissions were similar to those used for trying enemy combatants in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. After the legality of this system was challenged and the Supreme Court ruled that military commissions need explicit authorization by Congress, the President asked Congress for that authority - and Congress provided it."
Golden continues, in Sunday's Times, "The law prohibits them from challenging their detention or treatment by writs of habeas corpus in the federal courts. Instead, they may only petition a single federal appeals court to examine whether the review boards followed the military's own procedures in reviewing their status as 'enemy combatants.'"
"But an examination of the Guantanamo review boards by The New York Times suggests that they have often fallen short, not only as a source of due process for the hundreds of men held there, but also as a forum to resolve questions about what the detainees have done and the threats they may pose," the article continues.
According to officials who helped create the review panels, who spoke to the Times, attempts to create mechanisms "that would allow detainees to present witnesses and evidence, and allow the panels themselves to gather new information" have been "undone by the speed of most reviews -- often conducted in just hours -- and the low priority assigned to the gathering of new information on the detainees by intelligence agencies and foreign governments."
"This year, three panels at Guantanamo handled as many as 13 or 14 cases a week, they said," the Times reports.
Excerpts from Times article:
#
Some limitations have long been evident. The prisoners have no right to a lawyer, or to see evidence, or even to know the identity of their accusers. What has been less visible, however, is what many officials describe as a continuing shortage of information about many detainees, including some who have been held on sketchy or disputed intelligence .
Behind the hearings that journalists frequently observe is a system that has at times been as long on bureaucratic and diplomatic politics as it has been short on hard evidence. The result, current and former officials acknowledged, is that some detainees have been held for years on less-compelling information, while a growing number of others for whom there was thought to be stronger evidence of militant activities have been released under secret arrangements between Washington and their home governments.
....
Even so, a recent study of the review process found that detainees trying to argue their innocence were routinely denied witnesses they tried to call, even when the witnesses were other prisoners at Guantanamo. Lawyers for the detainees complain that the Defense Department has made almost no effort to have the panels consider information they have gathered, and has often blocked even their attempts to learn the allegations against their clients.
"We have tried again and again to have a say in the process," said Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer who has coordinated much of the work of the detainee lawyers for the Center for Constitutional Rights. "But we learned pretty early on that these were kangaroo courts."
#
FULL TIMES ARTICLE CAN BE READ AT THIS LINK
|
