Rupert Cornwell: Torture, terror and a trial system that is tainted

[Joanne98]

Wednesday, 13 February 2008


If George W Bush has his way, this will be al-Qa'ida's Nuremberg. A presidency that began with the deadliest terrorist attacks in history on American soil will end with the trial, conviction and sentencing to death of those who planned them.


President Bush's own nation, and right-thinking people around the world, will be delighted that the "Guantánamo Bay system" has been vindicated, justice has prevailed and that individuals guilty of a crime against humanity will be getting exactly what they deserved. Alas for Mr Bush, a man who likes things simple and straightforward, the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five others accused of a role in 9/11, will be anything but simple and straightforward. Yes, Americans (and most of the rest of us) have little doubt about their guilt, But, in this particular case, actual guilt or innocence is the least of the issues. This is now a trial about process – a process that stands tainted, probably beyond repair. In comparison, the judicial handling of the leaders of the Nazi regime was a model of clarity, fairness and openness.

To start with biggest problem of all: torture. By the admission of the CIA, Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding – a technique considered torture by virtually everyone on the planet with the exceptions of Messrs Bush and Cheney. How on earth can evidence obtained in that fashion be admissible in a court of law, even a military court?

We are now told that evidence will be based on "clean information" extracted by FBI and military interrogators during gentlemanly sessions at Guantánamo after Mohammed and four of the other defendants were transferred to the prison on Cuba in late summer 2006. But such evidence cannot be divorced from that obtained under duress during the years beforehand, when the five were held in CIA-run "ghost camps" whose very existence was only confirmed by Mr Bush 18 months ago.

It was in these paramilitary black holes that Mohammed was waterboarded and the other four doubtless subjected to various other "enhanced interrogation techniques". This is no vindication of the Guantánamo system. It is a monument to the way in which the Bush administration has acted outside all recognised international law.

Next, the military tribunal itself which will conduct the trial. Again, we are told that the proceedings, to the greatest extent possible, will be public. But these are not civilian courts. They are controlled by the Pentagon and the White House, the same executive branch that has authorised torture and sundry other human rights violations against the detainees – and that has usually managed to suppress public airing of inconvenient facts by arguing that disclosure would damage national security. As Groucho Marx observed, military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell-torture-terror-and-a-trial-system-that-is-tainted-781498.html