Reprieve deplores unjust Guantánamo “war crimes” trial

Reprieve deplores unjust Guantánamo “war crimes” trial

07.08.08

British legal action charity Reprieve denounces the just completed trial of Guantánamo prisoner Salim Hamdan as unjust and illegal.

“Fighting terrorism is a deadly serious game, but the show trial of Salim Hamdan looks like amateur hour. We heard during closing arguments that Salim Hamdan gave the US information about where Osama Bin Laden was – and the US botched the job. At the last minute of the trial, prosecutors realized they hadn’t proven some of the charges, so asked the judge to rewrite the law. And throughout, evidence gained from coercion – evidence that would never be allowed in a civilian or regular military court – was allowed to form the very heart of the prosecution’s case. These trials need to be professional, clear and open. Instead, we’ve got a shambles that brings us no closer to justice,” Zachary Katznelson, Legal Director of Reprieve stated.

He added: “These trials are not just about a few men and what they may have done – they are about the message the United States is sending to the world. And that message right now is flat wrong: convictions by any means necessary. The US needs to show it stands for openness and fairness – the very values we are fighting for. Instead, we get verdicts rammed down the gullet of justice. That’s not going to bring anyone over to our side.”

Throughout the course of the trial, Reprieve was concerned to note that, although the judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, performed his duties to the best of his abilities, he was constantly required to make arbitrary decisions about whether to accept information obtained through coercion or hearsay, as he is mandated to do under the terms of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This was the legislation that revived the commissions after the Supreme Court ruled that their first incarnation, conceived in November 2001, was illegal and unconstitutional.

As a result, information obtained coercively was accepted in the trial, even though it would have been excluded from a trial on the US mainland, or, for that matter, in a conventional trial by the US military. Reprieve also notes that the trial deviated from internationally accepted principles in other ways: by accepting, without complaint, that Guantánamo had functioned as an interrogation camp (which is illegal under the Geneva Conventions) and that the prisoners were not advised of their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination; by shamelessly showing a propaganda film about Al-Qaeda that even the judge admitted had no connection to Hamdan’s case; and by insisting, for spurious reasons of “security”, that the majority of the testimony for the defence took place in a closed court.

In case any doubts remain about the injustices of the military commissions, Reprieve notes that, even if Hamdan had been cleared by the military jury, the Administration has already stated that, as an “enemy combatant”, he could be held “until the end of hostilities.” As the Administration believes that the “War on Terror” is a “long war”, which may last for generations, this proviso confirms that the military commissions are, in fact, nothing more than show trials.

As Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s Director, explained: “The US Administration can do all in its power to show the world that its war crimes trials are fair, but this picture does not stand up to scrutiny. Scratch the surface, and the entire process is revealed for what it is: a show trial in which evidence obtained through coercion has been ruled as acceptable, propaganda has been marshalled shamelessly, and the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination has been abused. To pretend that this is justice is morally reprehensible.”

He added: “The hypocrisy of the US Government beggars belief. While maintaining that they believe in justice, the architects of the ‘War on Terror’ insist that they can hold prisoners forever, even after acquitting them in specially conceived trials of their own making. For the sake of the men who still remain in Guantánamo, this bleak farce should not be allowed to proceed any further.”

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For further information, please contact Andy Worthington at Reprieve’s Press Office on 020 7427 1099 or email: Andy@reprieve.org.uk