WASHINGTON, Jan 22: A US military lawyer representing an Australian national held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said the military tribunals created to try Sept 11 suspects were unfair and unable to serve justice.
The comments by Marine Corps Major Michael Mori, who represents Australian "enemy combatant" David Hicks, came as the US National Council of Churches said the Pentagon had rebuffed its request to visit the Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The council last month had sought permission to send a delegation to the prisoner camp home to some 660 foreign terror suspects out of "humanitarian concern for the detainees physical and mental well being," said the group's general secretary, Bob Edgar.
But Defence Department official Jeffrey Starr said access to detainees "is only provided to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and on a case-by-case basis to government officials for legitimate government purposes," according to excerpts from his letter made public by the council.
The US government insists that, as "enemy combatants," the Guantanamo Bay detainees can be held and interrogated indefinitely without any legal representation.
US President George W. Bush has declared six such inmates, including Hicks, eligible to be tried by military tribunals, which existed in the United Stated during World War II and were reinstated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to try terrorism suspects.
The tribunals will conduct their business behind closed doors a will have a lower threshold for conviction than regular courts, according to legal experts. Mori, who on Wednesday held a press conference in a Washington suburb along with several other military attorneys, said the military tribunals or commissions were "created and controlled by those with a vested interest only in convictions."
He warned that military trials could "lower the standard" used to treat US citizens in foreign countries and might set "a dangerous precedent." "The reality is, we wouldn't tolerate these rules if they were applied to US citizens," he said. Hicks was captured by US troops in late 2001 in Afghanistan where he was fighting alongside Taliban troops.-AFP
