'A US military judge has thrown out charges against two Guantanamo Bay detainees, casting fresh doubt on efforts to try foreign terror suspects.
Both cases collapsed because military authorities had failed to designate the men as "unlawful" enemy combatants...
...Marine Col Dwight Sullivan, chief defence lawyer for the Guantanamo Bay trials, said that the verdicts cast doubt on the entire system.
"We don't need any more evidence that it's a failure. This system should just stop," he told the Reuters news agency.
However, prosecution lawyers said that neither man was likely to be released, despite the judges' decisions.'bbc.co.uk
'Capt. Keith Allred went further, questioning President George W. Bush's ability to designate "an entire class of people" enemy combatants.
That's the label causing all the problems.
Both rulings were based on the fact the men haven't been declared "unlawful" enemy combatants who have no right to fight, something required by the Military Commission Act passed by Congress last year.
None of the other Guantanamo detainees has the new designation either.
The Bush administration called them "enemy combatants" to distinguish them from regular soldiers who, when captured, would become prisoners of war entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.
U.S. authorities still insist they can still be held indefinitely...
..."If the U.S. government's wise, this should be a fatal blow to the military commissions," said Jennifer Daskal at Human Rights Watch, who noted even Defence Secretary Robert Gates was critical of the trials at a recent hearing on Capitol Hill.
She noted regular U.S. courts have heard hundreds of terror cases since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, compared with just one plea bargain so far for the military commissions.'www.canada.com
How is the US going to get out of the Kafka-esque legal problems it has created for itself at Guantanamo?
'His charges stem from an incident where the U.S. sent Afghans into a compound where Khadr and others were located. The people inside the compound killed the Afghans and began firing at the U.S. soldiers. The Americans dropped two 500-pound bombs on the compound, killing everyone inside except Khadr. After Khadr threw a hand grenade which killed an American, the soldiers shot Khadr, blinding and seriously wounding him. Khadr begged them in English to finish him off. He was then taken to Baghram and later to Guantánamo.
According to Donald Rehkopf, Jr., co-chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Military Law Committee, “The government has steadfastly refused to allow hearings on this alleged [unlawful enemy combatant] status because there are so many prisoners at GTMO that were not even combatants, much less ‘unlawful’ ones. Khadr is in an unusual situation because he has a viable ’self-defense’ claim - we attacked the compound that he and his family were living in, and the fact that he was only 15 at the time.”
If Khadr were a U.S. citizen, he would not even be subject to trial by court-martial because of his age. When the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that children under 18 at the time of their crimes could not be executed, it said that youths display a “lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility” that “often results in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions.” A juvenile, the Court found, is more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and his character is not as well-formed as that of an adult. “From a moral standpoint,” Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, “it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.” The Bush administration’s treatment of Omar Khadr flies in the face of the Court’s reasoning.'jurist.law.pitt.edu
'Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, the only person being held on US soil as an "enemy combatant", was seized three months after the 9/11 terror attacks.
He has been held without charge in a navy prison for almost four years...
...To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the president calls them 'enemy combatants', would have disastrous consequences for the constitution - and the country," the court opinion said.'
Damned activists Judge, wanting to make the US pay attention to the Constitution, which, as we all know (and have been told), is just a piece of paper.
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The British government has argued that anyone captured in Iraq and detained and inhumanely treated has no rights under our Human Rights Act. Our highest court has rejected this argument:
The man is entitled to an independent inquiry into his case.He was suing the British Government anyway. The ruling makes his case the stronger. It confirms that he, and any other detainee abroad, has all the same rights as any other detainee or prisoner has in Britain or anywhere else in Europe.It does not matter that he was seized in a military operation or what the reason, if any, for his detention was.
