Rumsfeld ‘messed up’ terror trials: Lawyer’s allegation
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, April 7: Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his appointees set rules that violate US President George Bush’s order to hold fair trials for prisoners charged with terrorism in the Guantanamo tribunals, a military defence lawyer said on Friday.
“We can’t help it that the secretary of defence and his delegees (sic) have messed this thing up, but they have,” Major Tom Fleener, a military lawyer, told the presiding officer at one of the hearings.
“If the rules don’t provide for a full and fair trial, then they violate the president’s order.”
Major Fleener was trying to persuade the presiding officer, Col Peter Brownback, to let a Yemeni defendant act as his own attorney on charges of conspiring to attack civilians and destroy property.
Tribunal rules set by the Pentagon require the defendants to have US military lawyers who are authorised to see secret evidence that the accused may not be allowed to view. Pentagon officials have refused defence requests to allow self-representation, which Maj Fleener called a fundamental right in nearly every court on Earth.
Maj Fleener was appointed to defend Ali Hamza al Bahlul, an acknowledged Al Qaeda member charged with conspiring to commit terrorism by acting as Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard and making Al Qaeda recruiting videos.
Bahlul has refused to cooperate with any lawyer appointed by the US military. He asked to act as his own attorney or to have a Yemeni lawyer, and declared a boycott when the request was denied during a hearing last month. He did not attend his hearing on Friday at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Maj Fleener said Mr Bahlul cannot get a fair trial unless the rules change. “As the world looks at this system, it’s going to have no legitimacy whatsoever,” he said.
President Bush created them to try foreign terrorist suspects after the Sept 11 attacks, and directed Mr Rumsfeld and his appointees to draft rules that ensure full and fair trials while protecting national security.
RULES QUESTIONED: Defence lawyers have questioned whether another rule violated Mr Bush’s order by changing the role of the presiding officer. The president’s order said tribunal members would all serve as triers of law and fact, giving each of the four to seven panel members a dual role as judge and juror.
Subsequent Pentagon rules gave only the presiding officer the authority to decide legal issues, making him essentially the judge. The presiding officers have conducted three rounds of pre-trial hearings at Guantanamo since January without the other tribunal members present. Defence lawyers questioned whether that constituted a proper hearing.
The Guantanamo tribunals are the first war crimes trials held by the US military since World War Two.
Military defence lawyers and human rights groups have called the tribunals fundamentally unfair and stacked to ensure convictions. The US Supreme Court heard a challenge to their legitimacy last month and is expected to rule by the end of June on whether the trials can proceed.
Ten of the 490 Guantanamo detainees have been charged with conspiring to commit terrorism and four had pre-trial hearings this week at the base. The defendants would face life in prison if convicted. —Reuters
