Military lawyers call prisoner trials unfair (Guantanamo Bay)

[w4rma]

Neil A. Lewis NYT Tuesday, May 4, 2004

WASHINGTON The Bush administration's plan to use military tribunals to try some of the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which has faced considerable skepticism, has been receiving some of its sharpest attacks from the military defense lawyers who are participating in the process.

Senior government planners once expected that the first of the prisoners to go before a tribunal would plead guilty as part of an agreement to reduce their jail time. But the five military lawyers assigned to defend the first group of prisoners have radically altered that hope, officials acknowledge.

The uniformed lawyers have been especially forceful, not only in asserting their clients' innocence but also in denouncing the military tribunal system as inherently unfair.
…
Last month, an audience at Oxford University in England was stunned, witnesses said, when two of the lawyers, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift of the U.S. Navy and Major Mark Bridges of the U.S. Army, said that the tribunals were not capable of producing a fair and just result.
…
Like the other defense lawyers, she was critical of rules requiring that motions do not go to the panel of judges "but to the same officer who approved the charges in the first place."
…
http://www.iht.com/articles/518249.html

Were the folks who set this up more interested in show trials than in fair trials?

 

[sendec]

What do we call it when another country hold people incommunicado, without access to courts and in many cases attorneys, without charges being filed, with no discovery or due process, and secret evidence and proceedings on an island prison? I dont think its democracy.

 

[carpettbaggerr]

The US is not a democracy.

 

[R.H. Lee]

The uniformed lawyers have been especially forceful, not only in asserting their clients' innocence but also in denouncing the military tribunal system as inherently unfair.

So? This is what lawyers do. It is their job to defend their clients by whatever legal means, including assertions that the system is unfair.

Really, w4rma, you just undermine yourself by taking stuff out of context.

 

[FRIENDLY]

prisoners

Just let me get this straight-some people join one side of a civil war America invades the country captures them takes them to a third country and denies them Geneva convention rights.What would the American response be if that American soldier still missing in Iraq was put on trial publicly convicted and executed for war crimes.Hell to pay I would think.What America sows she will reap other bad people will use the American acts as an example and excuse