“Black Clouds” of Coercion over Guantánamo

[struggle4progress]

Guantánamo Bay, July 30, 2008:

On July 28, Navy Captain Judge Keith Allred, the military commission judge in Salim Hamdan’s trial, sanctioned the government for failing to share with the defense relevant discovery that provides new details about Hamdan’s more-than-six-years of confinement at Guantánamo. The government handed over 500 pages of documents to the defense just 12 hours before the July 21 start of the trial, despite multiple court orders and requests for discovery dating back to 2007. Because his court order regarding discovery had been ignored, Judge Allred stated that he would presumptively exclude statements extracted from Hamdan’s May 2003 interrogation unless the government could show by clear and convincing evidence that the evidence is reliable and should be admitted in the interest of justice ...

Two days later, on July 30, the government attempted to meet this higher burden of proof for admission of the May 2003 statements. The government tendered two witnesses, both currently assigned to Joint Task Force Guantánamo, to testify – on the basis of Hamdan’s 2003 detention logs – that Hamdan was not subjected to coercive techniques prior to his interrogation. To this observer, they failed. On cross-examination we learned that the two government witnesses were not in Guantánamo in 2003, never even spoke to the guards who moved Hamdan five years ago from cell to cell or to the intelligence officers who interrogated him in 2003, and thus could not credibly state what happened to Hamdan in May 2003. Instead we learned, in response to a question posed by Judge Allred, that intelligence officers at Guantánamo can change a detainee’s living conditions for the worse independent of any disciplinary reasons.

Hamdan’s statements made at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan already had been found inadmissible by Judge Allred because the coercive nature under which they were made rendered them unreliable. In Guantánamo, Hamdan was interrogated more than 40 times, but McFadden is the only agent who says Hamdan admitted to having sworn loyalty to Osama bin Laden. Hamdan denies making this statement. McFadden’s testimony would, to any observer, be all the more necessary for the prosecution’s case. It thus seems remarkable that the government would even risk this testimony being excluded by not complying with discovery orders.

Why would the government take such a risk? To shield abusive conduct ...

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/gitmo/2008/07/black-clouds-of-coercion-over-guantnamo.html

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

Also, parts of the 911 Commission Report were classified for the purposes of the trial. A bestselling book....classiffied. The defense wanted to ask questions of McFadden based on the report but were unable to do so because of parts of the report now being called classified.