http://tinyurl.com/95srt

quote:

SYDNEY, (AFP) - Leaked emails from two former prosecutors suggested the US military commissions to try detainees held at Guantanamo Bay are rigged, fraudulent and thin on evidence, Australian national radio reported.

Apparently the evidence necessary to convict the detainees is sometimes unconvincing. This may help explain the Administration's position on the issue.

Alan Moore

from the article -
In one of the emails obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, prosecutor Major Robert Preston wrote to his supervisor in March last year that the process was perpetrating a fraud on the American people.
"I consider the insistence on pressing ahead with cases that would be marginal even if properly prepared to be a severe threat to the reputation of the military justice system and even a fraud on the American people," Preston wrote, according to the ABC.


Preston said he could not continue to work on a process he considered morally, ethically and professionally intolerable, ABC reported, adding that he was transferred out of the Office of Military Commissions less than a month later.

A second email written by another prosecutor, Captain John Carr, who also ended up leaving the department, said the commissions appear to be rigged, ABC said.
"When I volunteered to assist with this process and was assigned to this office, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused," he was quoted as saying.
"Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganised effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged."
Carr said the prosecutors had been told by the chief prosecutor that the panel sitting in judgment on the cases would be handpicked to ensure convictions.
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Legal adviser to the military commissions, Brigadier General Thomas Hemingway, denies the allegations and said that an investigation by the Pentagon found no legal or ethical problems.
Doesn't the Pentagon answer to Rumsfeld? I have to wonder if the response from the Pentagon's investigation was typed up before any investigation took place.

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
- snip -

Legal adviser to the military commissions, Brigadier General Thomas Hemingway, denies the allegations and said that an investigation by the Pentagon found no legal or ethical problems.
Doesn't the Pentagon answer to Rumsfeld? I have to wonder if the response from the Pentagon's investigation was typed up before any investigation took place.

I think they bought a rubber stamp saying "No legal or ethical problems." Just a moment, yes, here's a copy of the order. The order was placed on September 12, 2001.

Alan Moore