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APGUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — A former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay testified Monday that he faced growing interference from his Pentagon superiors following the arrival at the Navy base of "high-value" detainees with direct links to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who was called to testify by lawyers for Osama bin Laden's former driver, said Pentagon officials showed increased interest in the schedule and the selection of detainees for trial once the prisoners arrived from secret CIA custody in September 2006.
"Suddenly, everybody had strong opinions about how we ought to do our job," Davis said. "If you can get the 9/11 guys charged, you get the victims' families energized, and if the case is rolling, whoever took the White House would have difficulty stopping this process."
Davis was cross-examined by the Army officer who replaced him after his resignation last October, Col. Lawrence Morris, in one of the most dramatic challenges to the first American war-crimes tribunals since World War II.
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Former Guantanamo prosecutor says trials taintedGUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba: The former chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals testified on Monday that the tribunals were tainted by political influence and evidence obtained through prisoner abuse.
Air Force Col. Moe Davis, who quit the war court last year, said political appointees and higher-ranking officers pushed prosecutors to file charges before trial rules were even written.
A supposedly impartial legal adviser demanded they pursue cases where the defendant "had blood on his hands" because those would excite the public more than mundane cases against document forgers and al Qaeda facilitators, Davis said.
He said the pressure ramped up after "high-value" prisoners with alleged ties to the September 11 plot were moved to Guantanamo from secret CIA custody shortly before the 2006 U.S. congressional elections and amid the ongoing U.S. presidential campaigns.
"There was that consistent theme that if we didn't get this thing rolling before the election it was going to implode," Davis testified in the courtroom at the remote Guantanamo naval base in Cuba.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/04/29/news/OUKWD-UK-GUANTANAMO-HEARINGS.php