Guantanamo trials 'being rushed'

[Praxius]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7426246.stm

Lawyers for five 9/11 suspects have said the US government is rushing their cases to trial at Guantanamo in order to sway the US presidential election.


They have called for the military judge to dismiss the case on the grounds it is politically motivated, according to documents seen by the Associated Press.

Alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is among the men facing trial.

The lawyers say the planned start date, two months before the 4 November vote, is designed to grab the public eye.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the five suspects in the case, which will be heard before controversial military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Charges against a Saudi citizen alleged to have been the "20th hijacker" in the 11 September 2001 attacks were dropped in May.
Human rights groups have questioned whether the military tribunals can be fair, and say the defendants have been tortured.

 

[MikeyDB]

It's difficult to understand the "process" involved here.... These people have already been determined as being present at a violent confrontation of arms....they are guilty of participating in repelling invaders who have a demonstrated proclivity to build societies that tetter on the brink of disaster after disaster after disaster.

Why bother with any judicial process when you're facts are self-evident?

It's an arena for media to shape.

 

[#juan]

Whatever the hell these people are guilty of, it happened in another country. I don't see were the right to try these people for capital crimes committed in another country falls on the U.S. when there is a perfectly good world criminal court available. Think about any other nation invading another country, shooting the leader's children, lynching that leader, and killing a hundred thousand or so civilians and then trying the defenders in a court ten thousand miles away. Sounds like bad fiction to me too.

 

[earth_as_one]

The US government does these things because they can.

Also, some surveys peg the number of civilians killed as a result of the US invasion of Iraq at just over 1,000,000.

On Friday, September 14, 2007, ORB (Opinion Research Business), an independent polling agency located in London, published estimates of the total war casualties in Iraq since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.[1] At over 1.2 million deaths (1,220,580), this estimate is the highest number published so far, outnumbering even the death toll of the recent Rwandan genocide.[2] From the poll margin of error of +/-2.5% ORB calculated a range of 733,158 to 1,446,063 deaths. The ORB estimate was performed by a random survey of 1,720 adults aged 18+, out of which 1,499 responded, in fifteen of the eighteen governorates within Iraq, between August 12 and August 19, 2007.[3][4] In comparison, the 2006 Lancet survey suggested almost half this number (654,965 deaths) through the end of June 2006. The Lancet authors calculated a range of 392,979 to 942,636 deaths.

On 28 January 2008, ORB published an update based on additional work carried out in rural areas of Iraq. Some 600 additional interviews were undertaken and as a result of this the death estimate was revised to 1,033,000 with a given range of 946,000 to 1,120,000.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualties

Regarding Guantanamo. I couldn't say it any better than Canadian General and Senator Romeo Dallaire:

OTTAWA -- The federal government's refusal to return Omar Khadr to Canada for trial should be likened to the terrorist activities that Mr. Khadr is alleged to have committed, Senator Romeo Dallaire said Tuesday.

Testifying before a parliamentary subcommittee on human rights, the Liberal senator said the United States -- and by association, Canada -- were ignoring international law by not recognizing Mr. Khadr as a child soldier. He argued the Canadian citizen was a victim who should have been swiftly rehabilitated and reintegrated into society instead of being tried in what he called an illegal court.

Mr. Dallaire is best known for leading the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, an experience that he said gave him expertise on child soldiers.

The senator said the United States "panicked" following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and began using unfair legal practices that made the superpower "no better than the other guy," referring to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups.

"In panicking, [the U.S.] is doing exactly what the extremists and terrorists are doing. They don't want to play by the rules," testified Mr. Dallaire.

Conservative MP Jason Kenney later pushed Mr. Dallaire to clarify his position, asking if he considered U.S. and Canadian governments the "moral equivalent" of al-Qaeda, whose combatants engage in drastic tactics such as decapitation and suicide bombing.

"Is it your testimony that al-Qaeda strapping up a 14-year-old girl with Down's syndrome and sending her into a pet market to be remotely detonated is the moral equivalent to Canada's not making extraordinary political efforts for a transfer of Omar Khadr to this country? Is that your position?" Mr. Kenney asked.

"If you want a black and white, and I'm only prepared to give it to you. Absolutely," replied Mr. Dallaire. "You're either with the law or not with the law."

"My position is that the minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties, in order to say that you're doing it to protect yourself and you are going against the fundamentals of those rights and conventions, you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all."

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=512660

 

[earth_as_one]

By the way, the US admitted to waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shown in the picture in the first post:

CIA admits waterboarding inmates

The CIA says it used waterboarding on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
The CIA has for the first time publicly admitted using the controversial method of "waterboarding" on terror suspects.
CIA head Michael Hayden told Congress it had only been used on three people, and not for the past five years.

He said the technique had been used on high-profile al-Qaeda detainees including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Waterboarding, condemned as torture by rights groups and many governments, is an interrogation method that puts the the detainee in fear of drowning....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7229169.stm

At one time, the US considered waterboarding a war crime and executed people found guilty of committng this heinous act.

Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime

By Evan Wallach
Sunday, November 4, 2007; B01

As a JAG in the Nevada National Guard, I used to lecture the soldiers of the 72nd Military Police Company every year about their legal obligations when they guarded prisoners. I'd always conclude by saying, "I know you won't remember everything I told you today, but just remember what your mom told you: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." That's a pretty good standard for life and for the law, and even though I left the unit in 1995, I like to think that some of my teaching had carried over when the 72nd refused to participate in misconduct at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Sometimes, though, the questions we face about detainees and interrogation get more specific. One such set of questions relates to "waterboarding."

That term is used to describe several interrogation techniques. The victim may be immersed in water, have water forced into the nose and mouth, or have water poured onto material placed over the face so that the liquid is inhaled or swallowed. The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." That's incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death. That is, the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding's effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years.

The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.

After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."

Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

Guantanamo is just one prison. The US has black sites with ghost detainees:

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
PRESS RELEASE

August 15, 2006


Amnesty International Seeks Information About "Ghost" Detainees and Secret Detention Sites Under FOIA
Group Partnering with Others to Get Answers


(Washington, DC) -- Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Amnesty International and the International Human Rights Clinic of New York University School of Law jointly submitted requests to various federal departments for records concerning "disappeared" detainees including "ghost" and unregistered prisoners. These detainees are individuals who are -- or have been -- held by, or with the involvement of the United States government, where there is no public record of the detentions. Such individuals have also often been subjected to the practice commonly known as extraordinary rendition.

"Despite the evidence of secret sites and unlawful rendition of suspects that Amnesty International, other NGOs and the media have uncovered, the United States government has 'so far' declined to discuss that such a program exists," said Curt Goering, Senior Deputy Executive Director for Amnesty International USA. "In addition, they decline to discuss secret detention and the existence of 'black sites.' How many more former detainees' testimonials, breaking stories and U.N. condemnations will it take for the United States to end its worst practices and abide by the rule of law?"...

http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=ENGUSA20060815001