Hurdles Seen as Capital Charges Are Filed in 9/11 Case

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By WILLIAM GLABERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/washington/12gitmo.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

WASHINGTON — Military prosecutors filed capital charges against a former senior leader of Al Qaeda and five other Guantánamo detainees on Monday for their roles in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, but the possible obstacles facing a death penalty case in the Bush administration’s military commission system were immediately apparent.

Col. Steven David, the chief military defense lawyer for the Guantánamo cases, who must provide detainees with military lawyers, said he did not have six lawyers available to take the cases, which the Pentagon described as a milestone in the war on terror.

In addition, he noted, a tangle of questions are unanswered in the military commission system, which has yet to begin a single trial. They include whether waterboarding constitutes torture, how statements obtained by coercion are to be handled, whether detainees may be so psychologically damaged that they may not be able to assist in their defense and exactly what the rules of the trials are to be.

All of which, Colonel David said, means there are no answers to what happens next in the most important case in the Guantánamo system, and how long it will take.

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1. The US Military will have a hard time proving guilt

Because they detainees have likely been tortured.