- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
U.S. Marine Corps lawyer assigned to defend an Australian terror suspect
being held at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba Wednesday criticized the
military tribunal process and said it will not allow a fair trial.
-
- Maj. Michael Mori, who in November was assigned to be
the military attorney for David Hicks -- an Australian held at the U.S.
military prison in Cuba -- said the system set up by the Pentagon for trials
of non-U.S. citizens captured during what U.S. officials call the war on
terror was unfair.
-
- "The military commissions will not provide a full
and fair trial," Mori told a news conference. "The commission
process has been created and controlled by those with a vested interest
only in convictions."
-
- "Fairness is extremely important in all cases, particularly
those that have commanded such international attention and will have international
impact," he said.
-
- Mori has met three times with Hicks, who has been held
for two years in Guantanamo Bay along with hundreds of other prisoners
detained during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
-
- None of the roughly 660 prisoners held at Guantanamo
Bay has yet been charged with any crimes although Pentagon officials have
suggested that military trials for some could begin soon.
-
- Most held at the base were arrested during the U.S. war
that toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan. Washington accused the Taliban
of harboring al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who is blamed for the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
-
- President Bush authorized the military commission trials
two months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
-
- "STRIKING INJUSTICE"
-
- The tribunals have sparked criticism in the United States
and abroad from rights groups and legal activists who say the procedures
are designed to produce convictions.
-
- Mori agreed, saying, "Using the commission process
just creates an unfair system that threatens to convict the innocent and
provides the guilty a justifiable complaint as to their convictions."
- Under the rules, the Pentagon can monitor communications
between prisoners and their lawyers, and there is no independent judicial
review process. Appeals go only to a special military review panel named
by the Pentagon, to the secretary of defense or the president.
-
- Mori and four other military defense lawyers filed a
brief with the Supreme Court last week challenging the constitutionality
of the tribunals. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed to the U.S. high
court in connection with a suit challenging some prisoners' detention,
they argued that foreign terrorism suspects being tried in the tribunals
should be given the right to appeal to civilian courts.
-
- Australia, which opposes the death penalty, already has
won assurances from the United States that Hicks and another Australian
detainee, Mamdouh Habib, could not be sentenced to death. Both men would
also be allowed to return home to serve any prison sentences if convicted.
-
- Mori said the most "striking injustice" of
the system was that commission members, who take the place of an independent
judge, do not have the authority to decide issues that could end up in
the dismissal of a charge.
-
- Mori said although he and other military lawyers assigned
to defend prisoners at Guantanamo Bay had complained about the tribunal
system, their concerns had not been addressed.
-
- Mori, who said he called the news conference to draw
attention to problems in the tribunal system, said the existing military
justice system was a better alternative.
-
- "There is no valid reason to create a new justice
system only for non-U.S. citizens," he said.
- http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4179427
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