NYT:Moving Quickly,US Readying (Gitmo) Review Panels(DOD v civil lib grps)

[DeepModem Mom]

Moving Quickly, U.S. Is Readying Review Panels for Cuba Base
By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: July 17, 2004


WASHINGTON, July 16 -Moving at what officials acknowledge is extraordinary speed, the Pentagon may begin special military hearings by the end of next week allowing prisoners held as unlawful combatants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to try to convince a board of officers that they are being wrongly detained.

At the same time, law firms enlisted by civil liberties groups have been rushing to establish a different route of challenging the detentions, by filing court petitions. By next week, petitions may have been filed in federal court here on behalf of as many as a third of the detainees.

In effect, the two sides are engaged in a kind of undeclared legal battle to decide how the fate of the 594 detainees remaining in Cuba will be determined in light of a Supreme Court ruling issued last month. And both the Pentagon and the defense lawyers evidently believe that they need to move speedily to gain an advantage.

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The Defense Department responded last week with plans for hearings at Guantánamo before newly created Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which would qualify as neutral, the department said, since the officers serving on them would have no stake in the fate of a particular detainee.

The civil liberties groups maintain that this solution has less to do with the Defense Department's intention to comply with the justices than with a determination to maintain control of the challenge process. The Pentagon evidently hopes that these hearings will be enough to persuade the courts not to intervene, say the critics, who as a result have added incentive to file their petitions as quickly as possible....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/17/politics/17gitmo.html