Gitmo lawyers seek access to classified files

[maddezmom]

Source: WaTimes

By Carmen Gentile
April 12, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — Classified documents regarding a Guantanamo detainee accused of killing a U.S. soldier when he was just 15 were the focus yesterday of a spat between prosecutors and defense attorneys who accused one another of manipulating the rules of the military court.



Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, attorney for Canadian Omar Khadr, appealed to the commission's judge to ask prosecutors to turn over documents deemed secret by the government for their perusal ahead of a yet-to-be determined start of the trial.



"The government swears up and down there was nothing helpful in the document," Cmdr. Kuebler said, referring to a document that supposedly contains details of the July 27, 2002, firefight in which Mr. Khadr purportedly killed Sgt. Christopher Speer with a hand grenade.



The defense for Mr. Khadr, now 21, complained yesterday to the judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, that the government was taking it upon itself to determine what classified documents were relevant to the case and accused prosecutors of withholding information they knew would be damning to their case against the detainee.




Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080412/FOREIGN/112239780/1003

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Guantanamo trial process unjust: defense attorney
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (AFP) — The lawyer of a Guantanamo detainee captured by US forces when he was 15 said Friday that the trial process at the US prison was inherently unjust and probably no detainee could be acquitted in a trial.

Attorney William Kuebler, a Navy lieutenant commander, railed against the tactics of government prosecutors and the military commissions for withholding secret evidence not available to the defense, and for their access to virtually unlimited resources as well as to documents pertaining to his clients' cases.

"I don't believe anyone could get an acquittal in Guantanamo Bay," said Kuebler, who has been a particularly outspoken critic of the military commissions.

His comments came after he clashed with government prosecutors over the start date for the trial of Omar Khadr, a Canadian child soldier accused of killing Sergeant Christopher Speer with a hand grenade during a July 2002 firefight in Afghanistan.

more:http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jz0aE5A7rD0UV7PsMoQsUvoiAotw

[annabanana]

1. Kuebler is right, of course. Who was the prosecutor who quit

after he was told outright that there were to be nothing but "guilty" verdicts?

[maddezmom]

2. Chief Guantanamo Prosecutor Resigned When Placed Under Command Of Torture Advocate»

Chief Guantanamo Prosecutor Resigned When Placed Under Command Of Torture Advocate»
Until Oct. 4, Morris Davis served as chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. When originally asked why he was stepping down, Davis said that the Pentagon had ordered him “not to communicate with the news media about my resignation or military commissions.”

Today in an LA Times op-ed, however, Morris reveals that part of the reason he resigned was that the Bush administration placed him under the chain of command of Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes, a torture advocate whose nomination to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals was blocked by the Senate. Morris writes:

I had instructed the prosecutors in September 2005 that we would not offer any evidence derived by waterboarding, one of the aggressive interrogation techniques the administration has sanctioned. Haynes and I have different perspectives and support different agendas, and the decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor’s office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions. I resigned a few hours after I was informed of Haynes’ place in my chain of command.

Haynes is a close ally of Vice President Cheney and has been described as a “prime mover” in the effort to contravene the dictates of the Geneva Conventions. A 2003 working group appointed and supervised by Haynes argued the Geneva Conventions “must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to Commander-in-Chief authority.”

More recently, Haynes blocked Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a former Guantanamo Bay prosecutor, from testifying before Congress about his experiences with “enhanced” interrogation.

In October, Morris also revealed that the Pentagon had been pushing for “high-profile” convictions of detainees ahead of the 2008 elections. Morris said “that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed ’sexy’ over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go.”

more:http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/10/morris-gitmo-haynes/

[maddezmom]

3. Former Gitmo Prosecutor: Pentagon Official Said "We Can't Have Acquittals"

Former Gitmo Prosecutor: Pentagon Official Said "We Can't Have Acquittals"
By Paul Kiel - February 20, 2008, 11:20AM
At this point, it's not even controversial to say that the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay are a sham. The current chief judge there has written that the military tribunals have “credibility problems." And the former chief prosecutor, after resigning, publicly criticized the system as "deeply politicized."

Now that former prosecutor, Col. Morris Davis, has given more evidence of that politicization in an interview with The Nation after the six Gitmo detainees were charged. Davis says that in an August, 2005 meeting with William Haynes, then the Pentagon's general counsel, Haynes seemed to completely discount the possibility of the military tribunals acquitting any of the detainees. Now, of course, Haynes has been installed as the official overseeing the whole process, both the prosecutors and the defense. From The Nation:

" said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time," recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, something that had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

more:http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/former_gitmo_prosecutor_pentag.php

[annabanana]

4. Thanks maddez! We have to remind everybody that NOTHING

honest comes out of trials that rely on evidence gained by torture. A kangaroo court by any name is the same.

[annabanana]

5. Sunday Morning Kick. . . . . n/t