Reply #5: "Why am I in Cuba?" in same issue has exerpts from military tribunal [View All]

[katinmn]

Chilling.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/07/detainee_sidebar.html

"Why Am I in Cuba?"
News: Excerpts from military tribunal transcripts

By Dave Gilson

Under rules drawn up in hasty response to a 2004 Supreme Court ruling, the Pentagon gave the Guantanamo detainees one chance to prove that they were not—as the U.S. government had vigorously asserted for the past two years—“the worst of the worst.” Between July 2004 and January 2005, the military held hundreds of combatant status review tribunals, one-time hearings in which detainees went before a panel of three unidentified American officers who reviewed the government’s reasons for holding them as enemy combatants. Detainees couldrespond directly to the accusations made against them and were assigned to an officer who shepherded them through the process. However, they did not have access to lawyers and often could not fully examine the government’s claims, particularly if those claims were based on classified information. Of the 558 detainees who faced tribunals, 38 were declared “No Longer Enemy Combatants.” (Thirty-five have since been released.) Asked about the process, then-Secretary of the Navy Gordon England said, “Obviously, it’s not perfect.” In June, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that the tribunals had violated federal law and the Geneva Conventions. Soon afterwards, the Pentagon announced it would begin to follow the conventions’ protections for detainees. These excerpts were taken from the thousands of pages of tribunal transcripts released this spring under the Freedom of Information Act.

Detainee 152, a Yemeni named Asim
Thahit Abdullah Al Khalaqi, was confronted with a list of the U.S. government’s reasons for calling him an enemy combatant.
al khalaqi: Are these evidence or accusations?
tribunal president: They are in the form of both….
al khalaqi: I’m sorry, I just don’t understand. How does it fit the two pictures or definitions? For example, if I say this table is the chair and the chair is the table and they are the same thing, does that make sense?
tribunal president:No, that doesn’t make sense. But this process makes sense to me and hopefully it will make sense to you, because you’re the one who’s going to have to provide us with evidence and tell us that you did or did not do these things as listed on the summary of evidence.
al khalaqi: So I just answer the accusations. But I’m going to call it accusations. I’m not going to call it evidence.
tribunal president:Very well, you can call it as you wish.

Detainee 024, a 24-year-old British citizen named Feroz Ali Abbasi, was released and sent back to England in January 2005.
abbasi: So, you are telling me I am an enemy combatant. I am telling you by special Geneva Conventions, I am a non-combatant….
tribunal president:Once again, international law does not matter here. Geneva Convention does not matter here. What matters here and I am concerned about and what I really want to get to is your status as enemy combatant based upon the evidence that has been provided and your actions while you were in Afghanistan. If you deviate from that one more time you will be removed from this tribunal and we will continue to hear evidence without you being present….
abbasi: I know, but I have the right to speak….
tribunal president:No, you don’t.
abbasi: And the personal representative told me I can say whatever I like.
tribunal president:He was mistaken if he told you that….

tribunal president:Once again…international law…. Mr. Abbasi, your conduct is unacceptable and this is your absolute final warning. I don’t care about international law. I don’t want to hear the words “international law” again. We are not concerned with international law.