Records Give Voice to Guantanamo Detainees

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON (AP) - A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay asked his U.S. military judge a pointed question: "Is it possible to see the evidence in order to refute it?" In another case, a judge blurted out: "I don't care about international law."

Court documents reviewed by The Associated Press are giving dozens of Guantanamo detainees what the Bush administration had sought to keep from public view: identities and voices.
.....
"You are not the master of the Earth, Sir," Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman, told a tribunal president.

Feroz Ali Abbasi was ejected from his September hearing because he repeatedly challenged the legality of his detention.

"I have the right to speak," Abbasi said.

"No you don't," the tribunal president replied.

"I don't care about international law," the tribunal president told Abbasi just before he was taken from the room. "I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law."

.......MORE...........

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050409/D89BMF5O0.html

[Catch22Dem]

1. "We are not concerned with international law"

Well doesn't that just sum it up?

[hootinholler]

2. That's what stuck in my craw too.

Recommended.

-Hoot

[Athame]

3. Here is the outrage.

"We believe the tribunal process gave each detainee a fair opportunity to contest their detention," said Navy Capt. Beci Brenton, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department office overseeing the prisoners at Guantanamo.

Administration officials repeatedly have said the prisoners are not entitled to the internationally accepted legal protections given prisoners of war.

<end snip>

Watching the coverage of the Terri Schiavo protesters, I could not help but mourn that we don't have huge crowds holding vigil for these PEOPLE in Gitmo, who have been held without trial for over three years! The shame of this episode in our history will have a long, long legacy.

[leftchick]

4. What a country we live in eh?

sickening what we have become. I am so ashamed of AmeriKa....

~snip~

The tribunals in some cases rejected requests for witnesses or documents that detainees said would help prove their innocence.

Boudella Al Hajj requested a copy of a court document from Bosnia. The tribunal president ordered the document produced, but military personnel couldn't locate it, so the proceedings commenced without it.

A tribunal dropped an effort to find some documents requested by Mustafa Ait Idr after the detainee decided not to participate any further in the proceeding. Terminating the search "was within the tribunal president's discretion," the panel's legal adviser wrote.

Idr told the tribunal that soldiers at Guantanamo had broken two of his fingers and "put my head on the ground, and then another soldier came and put his knee on my face."

"There are a lot of things regarding the soldiers, but I won't talk about all of them," the detainee told the tribunal, which referred his and other allegations of mistreatment up the chain of command.

---

On the Net:

Documents from court proceedings for many of the detainees are available at: http://wid.ap.org/documents/detainees/list.html

[Matriot]

5. They'll care about international law when our US leaders get

brought up on charges for war crimes. Which I hope happens soon.

Another thing, if they're claiming international law does not apply, then these "detainees" are protected under the US Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice which does provide for them to due process of the law and not to be arbitrarily detained.

[suffragette]

6. looks like the administration has read and made real "The Trial"

And the detainees are all now Josef K.

"Is it possible to see the evidence in order to refute it?" from Guantanamo detainee


"They want, as far as possible, to prevent any kind of defence, everything should be made the responsibility of the accused."
"This is because proceedings are generally kept secret not only from the public but also from the accused. " Kafka, from "The Trial"