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<h1><font size=1><b>
<a href="http://willyritch.com/?p=557" eudora="autourl">
http://willyritch.com/?p=557<br><br>
<br>
</a></b></font></h1><h2><b><a href="http://willyritch.com/?p=557">A
Kangaroo Court Would Be an Improvement<br>
</a> </b></h2><font size=3 color="#FF0000">[Links to listen to the
tapes are at the NPR website below]<br><br>
</font><a href="http://willyritch.com/wp-content/photos/557.pic.jpg">
<img src="cid:6.2.5.6.2.20061121054839.0466b700@freedomarchives.org.1" width=278 height=350 alt="[]">
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<br><br>
NPR has obtained tapes of portions of the hearings held at Guantanamo Bay
that are supposed to determine if the detainees being held there are
“enemy combatants.” NPR got hold of the tapes through a Freedom of
Information request, and were only able to obtain tapes of the
“unclassified” portion of the proceedings. (In fact, even the detainees
themselves are not allowed to hear what happens during the classified
sections.) In the tapes that NPR broadcast, we hear a detainee who has
been held for five years. In his single hearing he tells the court he is
not a combatant, but the only witnesses he can call on his behalf are
other detainees. <br>
<a href="??.htm"><br>
</a>In a story that ran yesterday on NPR, a lawyer for two detainees said
that in about 400 cases he studied, nearly every time the result was the
same: the hearing ended with the government declaring that the defendant
was an enemy combatant, often that same day. Mark Denbeaux says that in
the few cases the tribunal found the detainees not to be enemy
combatants, when that result reached Washington the Defense Department
ordered a rehearing, and if necessary a “re-rehearing” until the tribunal
finally came up with the desired result: a decision that the detainees
was, in fact, an enemy combatant.<br><br>
Denbeaux tells NPR that in the cases he studied the government did not
provide a single witness for their cases and in only a dozen or so
instances did they offer any evidence at all in the portion of the trial
that the detainee was allowed to attend. Detainees were allowed to
challenge the evidence against them, but since that evidence was all
confined to the secret portion of the hearing, they had no way of knowing
what that evidence actually was.<br><br>
In 2004 the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot simply declare
someone an enemy combatant and hold them indefinitely without any sort of
judicial review. In that 8-1 decision there was some disagreement over
what the government did have to do with these detainees. Although two
justices wrote that the government had to give the detainees a full,
US-style hearing in court, but in the end the majority opinion only
required the government to come up with a type of hearing that allowed
detainees a “meaningful” chance to challenge their detention. The
government reacted by saying the detainees at Guantanamo would be able to
challenge their status as enemy combatants in what is called the
“Combatant Status Review Tribunal.” It is the tapes of those hearings
that NPR has obtained. <br><br>
</font><h3><b>Tapes Provide First Glimpse of Secret Gitmo
Panels</b></h3><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6514923" eudora="autourl">
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6514923</a><br><br>
<img src="cid:6.2.5.6.2.20061121054839.0466b700@freedomarchives.org.2" width=67 height=16 alt="Listen to this story...">
by
<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story//templates/story/story.php?storyId=2100981">
Jackie Northam</a> <br><br>
<i>
<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story//templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=3">
Morning Edition</a>, </i>November 21, 2006 · Audio recordings obtained by
NPR provide the outside world with its first window into the secret world
of military tribunals at the U.S. prison camp for terrorism suspects at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.<br><br>
The recordings, made by the U.S. military, are of tribunals held in the
fall of 2004 to review the "enemy combatant" status of six
detainees who were arrested in Bosnia in late 2001. Lawyers for the men
obtained the tapes under the Freedom of Information Act and provided NPR
with copies of the recordings.<br><br>
The Combatant Status Review Tribunals are held in small, low-ceiling
trailers at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon describes the proceedings as an
administrative process, so the detainees are not allowed lawyers. There's
a court reporter, a translator and a panel of three military officers to
whom detainees tell their story, ask why they are being held, and appeal
for release.<br><br>
The audio recordings of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals are
scratchy, of poor quality and don't pick up much of what's happening in
the small room: You can't sense facial expressions or body language, or
that the detainee's arms and legs are shackled. <br><br>
However, you can hear the tribunal president inquire after the health and
comfort of Mustafa Ait Idir, one of several men whose tribunal tapes were
reviewed for this story. <br><br>
"Are those on too tight?" the panel president asks, referring
to the shackles on Ait Idir's hands and feet. <br><br>
"He says, 'I've had them on for a very long time,'" a
translator responds for the detainee. <br><br>
<b>No Set Pattern for Proceedings<br><br>
</b>Testimony at the tribunals doesn't appear to follow any set pattern.
Some start with questioning from the military officers. At others, the
detainee will launch into a speech about how they were arrested and sent
to Guantanamo, and how they're being treated at the detention camp. Ait
Idir speaks through a translator for almost an hour before the tribunal
president interrupts him to inquire further about an incident of alleged
abuse.<br><br>
"Are you saying a soldier in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, broke your
fingers?" the tribunal president asks.<br><br>
"Soldiers took me and they placed me on the ground in the rocks
outside. They bound my hands and my feet," Ait Idir responds through
a translator. He goes on to describe brutal treatment allegedly at the
hands of U.S. soldiers.<br><br>
Ait Idir is one of six Algerians who lived in Bosnia for about a decade
before being arrested shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, on suspicion of plotting to bomb the American and British embassies
in Sarajevo. <br><br>
The men were held for three months, until Bosnia's Supreme Court
acquitted all of them. Ait Idir and the others tell the tribunal that
when they walked out of the police station as free men, they were quickly
arrested again by Bosnian and U.S. officials, put on a plane and sent to
Guantanamo. <br><br>
<b>Learning of the Accusations Against Them<br><br>
</b>Hadj Boudella, one of the other detainees, tells the military panel
at his tribunal that this is the first time he's heard some of the
accusations against him.<br><br>
"I've been here for three years, and these accusations were just
told to me," Boudella says. "Nobody or any interrogator ever
mentioned any of these accusations you are talking to me about
now."<br><br>
What's striking is that, despite not knowing fully why they're being
held, enduring open-ended detentions and sometimes harsh interrogations,
the detainees on these audio tapes express faith that truth will prevail.
Boudella tells the panel that his lawyers -- at the Boston firm
Wilmerhale -- sent him a letter telling him not to participate in the
tribunal for fear of incriminating himself. <br><br>
"I want to show you that I am really innocent, and I want you to see
I can defend myself," Boudella says on the recording. "If
you're innocent, no matter how people try to cover your innocence, it
will come out."<br><br>
<b>Unclassified Evidence Is Slim<br><br>
</b>The detainees question the panel about the evidence against them and
ask for proof, rather than just allegations. The audio recordings and
transcripts show that the unclassified evidence is slim; for example,
just a rundown of allegations, petitions for habeus corpus, which
challenges the prisoners' detention, and affidavits attached to those
petitions; one has a letter from Ait Idir's wife. At one point, Ait Idir
expresses disbelief over the lack of proof and tells the panel he hoped
it had more evidence it could give him. <br><br>
"If I was in your place, but if a supervisor came to me and showed
me accusations like these, I would take these accusations and I would hit
him in the face with them," he tells the panel, apologizing for
being so blunt.<br><br>
Ait Idir, Boudella and the others on the recordings all ask that they be
allowed to provide the tribunal with additional evidence, such as a copy
of the decision by Bosnia's Supreme Court, showing their acquittal.
<br><br>
One detainee asked that his supervisor at the Red Crescent Society in
Bosnia testify at the proceeding. He is told that a request was made
twice to the U.S. State Department, which handles the matter; each time,
the date of the tribunal was emphasized. The tribunal president says
there was no response from the State Department to either request.
<br><br>
In some cases, the detainees' representatives don't know what efforts
have or are being made to locate requested evidence. The only witnesses
available to Ait Idir and Boudella are the other men they were arrested
with. Boudella asks one witness the most pertinent question: "Do you
know if I belong to any terrorist organization or if I am a
terrorist?"<br><br>
In a simple, almost naïve answer, the witness tells the tribunal that
Boudella is not a terrorist. "All I know about this person is that
he is a very nice and very good person. He takes good care of his
family," the other detainee says.<br><br>
<b>Critics Call Process Deeply Flawed<br><br>
</b>The military panel asks the detainees many questions during each
tribunal: Where they grew up, where they worked, if they'd ever been to
Afghanistan, if they belonged to any terrorist organizations. Then, the
panel wraps up the unclassified session of the tribunal. <br><br>
"Mustafa, you shall be notified of the tribunal decision upon
completion of the review of these proceedings by the convening authority
in Washington, D.C.," the tribunal president tells Ait
Idir.<br><br>
That was two years ago. Ait Idir and Boudella were both found to be enemy
combatants and remain at Guantanamo Bay. In January, they will have spent
five years in the prison camp. They have yet to be charged with any
crimes.<br><br>
Critics have always said that the Guantanamo tribunals are deeply flawed.
Among other things, they point to the fact that detainees are only
allowed to sit in for the unclassified session of the tribunal. They are
banned from seeing or hearing the classified information against
them.<br><br>
Lawyers at Seton Hall University recently evaluated the records and
transcripts for nearly 400 similar military hearings at Guantanamo. In
most cases, they found, the government did not produce any witnesses at
the tribunals, and detainees were only allowed to use other detainees at
witnesses. <br><br>
"Ninety-six percent of the time, [the government] produced no
evidence of any sort," Seton Hall law professor Mark Denbeaux told
NPR's Robert Siegel. Denbeaux represents two detainees and co-authored
the report. <br><br>
"They relied instead on secret evidence that was classified,"
Denbeaux says. "And the government's procedure was, anything in that
secret evidence was presumed to be valuable and valid. And then the
detainee was given the opportunity to rebut the secret evidence. But he
was never told what the secret evidence was."<br><br>
The Pentagon dismisses such criticisms, arguing that the tribunals are
fair, and that the detainees are allowed to state their case, and produce
witnesses and evidence of their own.<br><br>
<br>
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