CHICAGO, Feb 5: The American Bar Association (ABA) will urge President George W. Bush’s administration to observe the legal norms of US military justice and international law in its treatment of suspected terrorists, officials said Tuesday.
ABA members voted overwhelmingly Monday in favour of a resolution that called for suspects to be granted the due process rights that form the basis for US court martials or UN war crimes prosecutions.
The norms would guarantee what the Bush administration is calling “unlawful combatants,” the right to an independent and impartial tribunal, with proceedings open to the public or at least trial observers, when and if they are finally brought to trial.
A military tribunal — the most likely forum for any prosecutions — should be required to abide by the principles of a presumption of innocence and proof beyond reasonable doubt, according to the leading US lawyers group.
A death penalty would require a unanimous verdict and detainees should also be able to file appeals with the US Supreme Court, the resolution said.
“Our system does not work, democracy does not live, unless we are prepared to give the same rights to the worst of us as we are to the best of us,” said Neal Sonnett, a prominent Miami defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, who supported the resolution.
“We are a democratic society that believes in the rule of law. We have an obligation to maintain that principle even in the worst of times.”
The resolution, approved by a margin of almost two to one at the ABA mid-year meeting in Philadelphia Monday, is now official ABA policy.
The ABA will encourage the Bush administration and Congress to consider its recommendations when it decides how to deal with anyone arrested in connection with the war on terrorism, notably the detainees held at Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Bush administration has been debating whether the detainees should be treated within the parameters of the Geneva Conventions, amid mounting international criticism over the detainees’ treatment.
The US military has temporarily suspended prisoner transfers from Afghanistan to Guantanamo, though officials have strenuously denied that the halt came in response to the criticism, including from European allies, about the handling of the prisoners.
And in an echo of some of those criticisms, the ABA warned the Bush administration and US lawmakers to be mindful of the precedents that future prosecutions would set, not only in relation to future prosecutions of US nationals abroad, but also with regard to the role of international legal norms in other nation’s responses.
PHILIPPINES: The Philippines supreme court on Tuesday ordered the government to explain to them the legal basis for the joint anti-terror operations with US troops underway in the southern Philippines, court officials said.
The court also ordered Defence Secretary Angelo Reyes and Executive Secretary Alberto Romulo to answer in 10 days a petition seeking to stop the deployment of hundreds of US troops in areas of Muslim guerrilla activity.
Romulo is chief aide to President Gloria Arroyo.
Two lawyers last Friday urged the Supreme Court to stop the operations, which the government said would involve at least 600 US troops advising Filipino troops in fighting the Abu Sayyaf.
Lawyers Arthur Lim and Paulino Ersando argued that the deployment made a “mockery of the Philippine constitution”.—AFP