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TechnoratiOsama bin Laden's driver Salim Hamdan was convicted at Guantánamo Bay yesterday - in his second trial at the hands of the Bush administration.
Had his first in 2004 not been interrupted by a successful appeal to the Supreme Court, he would have been acquitted. For what he has been found guilty of -- providing material support to terrorism -- was not then under the jurisdiction of the military tribunal that has sentenced him.
Such is justice under George W. Bush. Such is the justice that awaits Omar Khadr and 80 others to be tried by the special military tribunals at Guantánamo.
More than the detainees, though, it is the Bush administration that's on trial. Thus the United States is on trial. There, the verdict is already in: Guilty.
Guilty of torturing detainees. Guilty of obtaining evidence from torture. Guilty of introducing hearsay evidence in trials. Guilty of hiding evidence from the detainees.
Guilty, therefore, of violating the most basic norms of the rule of law -- and betraying American values.
It's precisely because of all of the above that Bush concocted his kangaroo courts, avoiding both the civilian courts and the military courts martial, both of which would have ensured due process.
"It all stems from the administration's decision to endorse torture," says Jameel Jaffer, a Canadian who directs the American Civil Liberties Union's national security project. "These tribunals are the fruit of that poisonous tree.
"Once the decision was made to use torture, the administration needed a system of rules that would allow them to rely on evidence obtained from torture. Thus these military commissions."
But what happens in these trials is almost irrelevant. The process is discredited. It is seen as illegitimate by much of the world, including a majority of Canadians and an increasing number of Americans.
As for the Muslim world, where the war against terrorism counts the most, it will engender even more fury.
When Bush opened Guantánamo in 2002 to house the prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere, he declared them to be "unlawful enemy combatants."
He stripped them of their Geneva Convention rights and also argued that they be denied habeas corpus, the old principle that a prisoner must be brought before a court to justify his detention.
In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees did have that right. But Bush got the Republican-controlled Congress to pass the Detainee Treatment Act (2005), stripping the detainees of habeas corpus.
In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that Bush did not have the authority to set aside the Geneva Conventions when he set up his 2002 military commissions.
But Congress granted him just such authority, passing the Military Commissions Act. It essentially resurrected his military commission system, authorizing them to prosecute for terrorist crimes, including the provision on which Hamdan has now been convicted.
Bush has had two tracks going at Guantánamo: one for those charged with war crimes and another, through the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, for those who haven't been charged and may never be.
The latter was ostensibly an alternative to habeas corpus. Except that it wasn't. The detainees could not have legal counsel. They could not have access to evidence either.
The system was so rigged that a military member of one of the panel quit, saying the tribunals were a farce and, in some instances, fixed.
A study done by Seton Hall University School of Law -- "No-hearing Hearings" -- was instructive. Of the 102 tribunal hearings it analyzed, only three led to the detainees being declared "no longer enemy combatant." (The Bush administration, averse to admitting a mistake, would not say that a person was never an enemy combatant.)
Even in those three cases, the Pentagon ordered a new tribunal and the detainee was duly deemed an enemy combatant. In one, the detainee was found to be "no longer an enemy combatant" by two tribunals, so a third was convened and it found him to be an enemy combatant.
Meanwhile, another court challenge on behalf of the detainees was making its way to the Supreme Court. In June, it ruled that Bush's tribunals were not an adequate alternative to habeas corpus.
Yet the sham trials continue.
Jaffer: "The most absurd thing is that if, by some miracle, Hamdan had been found guilty on all counts, acquittal wouldn't have meant liberty. He'd have just been moved to a different cell. The trial was essentially meaningless because the administration takes the position that it has the right to hold enemy combatants until the end of the war on terror, whether or not they have been convicted of crimes."
All this is tragic. Some of the defendants may have committed horrendous crimes. Yet their sentences will carry little or no moral authority. This wouldn't have been the case had the administration gone through ordinary courts or the courts martial system.
The American criminal justice system has been perfectly capable of dealing with complicated terrorism cases. The perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were prosecuted in the courts.
In the post-9/11 period, Richard Reid (the shoe bomber), Zacarias Moussaoui (9/11 co-conspirator) and Joe Padilla (the dirty bomber) were all prosecuted by the courts and are in jail.
-- Haroon Siddiqui
© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2008
10 Comments so far
Show AllWe, the American people, will never wake up. You see we do not give a damn about our rights or our country. G.W. Bush could take and shot a person on national TV for the whole world to see and we, the American people, would still do nothing. Hell it was some other poor soul not us. Just keep giving us our entertainment and let us go on believing that we are free and we are happy and the government can do what ever it wishes. If the government wants to arrest or kill my neighbor then that is all right with me as long as it is not me. This is America today, Love yourself and do not give a damn about others.
Truth_Forward: Did the subject come up again in the sixties? I ask that because if it was in the fifties that he "jumped" out of the window, I was barely aware of being alive, much less asking my mother questions. Wasn't LSD a drug that was tested in the sixties with psych patients as well as prisoners and soldiers? That was my understanding: they were testing a lot of bio-crap at that time.
What I do recall vividly though, is that there was some FBI guy who died under mysterious conditions after trying to leave the agency which is what started my fascination with American politics (and its general weirdness to many of we Canadians anyway -- especially the electoral college thing that is so not democratic).
A Voice Apart: Are you referring to the death of Frank Olson? He was a US Army scientst who was secretly dosed with LSD. Needless to say he freaked out and was taken to NYC for "treatment".
He supposedly "threw" himself out of the window of his room on the 10th floor on November 28, 1953. However bizarre things that happened such as a cryptic call from the room after his "suicide" cast doubt.
He and his CIA "companion" were staying at the Hotel Statler (now the Hotel Pennsylvania).
Frank's son later had the body exhumed and examined. The examiner found evidence of blows to the head and found no evidence of cuts from him going through a closed window.
bryanD: When I was a teenage I asked my mother about am FBI man who had "jumped" out of a highrise and the media questions regarding the "mysterious" circumstances of his death. I cannot remember his name, but there have been questions ever since. I don't know if it was a big thing in American news then, but it was in the Canadian press. Anyway, my mother told me then that Americans eat their own. The government will kill their own in order to keep their version of the story straight. Straight out of their propaganda machine. This was in the late sixties. So many of us grew up knowing never to believe what governments or media (corporate) say, especially the US gov't., because of this. The war in Vietnam with all the draft dodgers coming here didn't foster any trust in the US system of imperialism for many Canadians (not all though, not then nor now: some Canadians are total believers in US and neo-con Harper crap).
Anyway, this is to say to you and others, always question "authority" because not all "experts" or authority are honest and are most often hiding horrendous secrets that the average person would rather not believe are true.
So would the US gov't in power commit murder on its own people? I would say yes and you are right to admonish your fellow citizens to "wake up" and smell the stinking flesh of a rotting body.
Driving While Muslim...
this spoiled brat watched his dad and grampa coddle nazis and cozy up with torturing tyrants, craving the day he could out do them all. his dad organized the kennedy and lennon killings, so to top it, the boy puts his name on 911 and all this satranic shit.
there is justice in america for you
just ask the blacks or the first nations how they feel about it
here's what gets me - 9/11 is a bullshit false flag event orchestrated by the secret government/corporations who run amerika
why is it that people keep saying "the government would never do something like that!"
what kind of fantasy/alternative reality do these assholes live in
sy hersh has written about cheney recently trying to orchestrate yet another false flag event using navy seals disguised as iranian swift boats - then he would start a war with them
hey sleeping assholes - yes the government would do something like that - essentially because they basically don't give one sweet shit about you or your families
somebody tell me - how stupid are these people - at what point do they wake up
serfs of amerika - wake up and smell the coffee before you find yourself in the gas chambers or the fema prisons
There is a proofreading mistake in the first sentence of the fourth to last paragraph, "Hamdan had been found (guilty)" , should read "innocent".
Apart from that, this is a good article. I would just add by noticing that on the same day congress' show trial is passing judgement, Bush was lecturing the Chinese government on human rights. How funny is that? And what do you pay the supreme court for, by the way, does anybody know, because the article mentions a judgement in 2004 that was simply ignored. Perhaps they should all just drop the pretence of being judges and go on an extended fishing trip with Cheney.
I've got a suggestion, why not elect congress people that will only confirm judges that take their jobs seriously and order the emptying of the gulag?
just what i suspected....bush and company have a bunch of "no bodies" ( as far as connections to 911 and al queda) these men are human beings,and bushco,does not want to recognize that....just lock em up and throw away the key.....i would say to bush,if i saw him in person...."what goes around,comes around"
Welcome to fascist AMERIKA...that follows its judicial leadership from Fascist ISRAEL who learned their style from NAZI GERMANY!