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Home Front
US fires Guantanamo defence team
2003-12-03
A team of military lawyers recruited to defend alleged terrorists held by the US at Guantanamo Bay was dismissed by the Pentagon after some of its members rebelled against the low per diems unfair way the trials have been designed, the Guardian has learned. And some members of the new legal defence team remain deeply unhappy with the trials - known as "military commissions" - believing them to be slanted towards the prosecution and an affront to modern US military justice. Of the more than 600 detainees at the US prison camp at Guantanamo, none has been charged with any crime, and none has had access to a lawyer, although some have been in captivity of one kind or another for two years.
That’s generally the case with illegal combatants.
But the US has repeatedly promised that at least some of the prisoners will be charged and tried by military commissions, an arcane form of tribunal based on long-disused models from the 1940s.
Blew the dust off the books and viola!
When charged, a prisoner will be assigned a uniformed military defence lawyer. The prisoners have a theoretical right to a civilian lawyer, but the US has placed financial and bureaucratic obstacles in the way of this.
"Wudja mean, I gotta PAY for a mouthpiece?"
A former military lawyer with good contacts in the US military legal establishment said that the first group of defence lawyers the Pentagon recruited for Guantanamo balked at the commission rules, which insist, among other restrictions, that the government be allowed to listen in to any conversations between attorney and client. "There was a circular that went out to military lawyers in the early spring of 2003 which said ’we are looking for volunteers’ for defence counsel," said the ex-military lawyer. "There was a selection process, and the people they selected were the right people, they had the right credentials, they were good lawyers.
As opposed to good human beings. But pray, continue.
"The first day, when they were being briefed on the dos and don’ts, at least a couple said: ’You can’t impose these restrictions on us because we can’t properly represent our clients.’ When the group decided they weren’t going to go along, they were relieved. They reported in the morning and got fired that afternoon."
"Plane boards at 5 pm sharp. Git."
The Pentagon’s recently set up Office of Military Commissions denied the claim. "That is not true, never happened," said its spokesman, Major John Smith.
"Nope, nope, never happened that way, nope.
That's an alias, isn't it? If it isn't, I'll bet he get snickers every time he takes his wife to a motel. Prob'ly does it on purpose, in fact...
Yet the Guardian understands from a uniformed source with intimate knowledge of the mood among the current military defence team, six lawyers strong, that there is deep unhappiness about the commission set-up.
"Damn, Skip. I'm deeply unhappy. Defending these beauzeaux isn't going to help my won-lost record one little bit..."
"It’s like you took military justice, gave it to a prosecutor and said, ’modify it any way you want’," the source said. "The government would like to say we have done these commissions before. But what happened after [the Nazi cases] was the military justice system changed. What we have done is stupid. It is, I would say, an insult to the military, to the evolution of the military justice system. They want to take us back to 1942."
The Gitmo ’detainees’ want to take us back to 710.
Posted by:Steve White

#3  "Archaic rules dating from the 1940's"
Seems to me, that's the last time we had a major war that we actually captured "illegal combattants" and held them prisoner. If that's the last time the rules NEEDED to be used, what's 'archaic' about that? The Guardian is brown and smelly.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2003-12-3 11:47:27 AM  

#2  These are not "disenfranchised" punks who knocked over a 7-11. The lawyers need to get a grip or fugg off. The fact that they were not shot where they stood over there in Wackiland is because we wanted to drain every phreakin' last drop of intel from them, first. What happens to the worthless leftover husk of these failed killer jihadis should not be confused with what should happen to honorable men.
Posted by: .com   2003-12-3 9:05:07 AM  

#1  Anyone know if these are the same rules and procedures used at Nuremberg? It would be interesting to see the Guardian argue itself into proclaiming the Nazi war crimes trials were invalid.
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2003-12-3 8:25:57 AM  

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