Military judge throws out Guantánamo case

[geese]

From The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,2095376,00.html):

The White House's legal regime at Guántanamo Bay was thrown into chaos today when a military judge threw out all charges against a detainee held there since he was 15.

The decision by the judge, Colonel Peter Brownback, to dismiss all charges against the detainee, Omar Khadr, on technical grounds, has broad implications for the Bush Administration's system of military tribunals because the technicality appears to apply to all 385 prisoners held at Guántanamo.

The dismissal of the case against Mr Khadr also undermines the US governmmennt's efforts to demonstrate that the military tribunals are based on sound legal practice, and can provide detainees with a fair hearing, detainee lawyers said.

In his decision today, Col Brownback said the Pentagon had merely designated Mr Khadr, a Canadian citizen facing charges of murder and terrorism, as an "enemy combatant",and not an "unlawful enemy combatant", the term used by Congress last year in authorising the tribunals.

The Pentagon's lapse meant that the tribunal did not have proper jurisdiction to try Mr Khadr. "A person has a right to be tried only by a court that has jurisdiction over him," Col Brownback said.

The colonel's ruling also suggests that none of the 385 other detainees at Guántanamo Bay, held for more than five years without charge, can be brought to trial before the tribunals because they too have been designated merely as "enemy combatants", detainee lawyers said today.

"The system right now should just stop," Marine Colonel Dwight Sullivan, the lead military defence lawyer for the detainees, told reporters.

"The commission is an experiment that failed and we don't need any more evidence that it is a failure."

Mr Khadr's defence team was equally scathing. "This is a shambles," said Kristine Huskey, who had been on Mr Khadr's defence team until last week when he sacked all of his American lawyers.

"It's another example of how everything has been so ad hoc. The Military Commissions Act was just not done thoughtfully."

Today's ruling does not bring Mr Khadr any closer to freedom. Col Brownback declared that he was throwing out the charges "without prejudice", which means that the Pentagon could issue new charges against Mr Khadr.

However, it exposes the hastiness with which Congress moved in October last year to bring in legislation authorising the Guántanamo tribunals after the supreme court last year threw out an earlier version proposed by Washington.

Now, barely a year later, the Guántanamo tribunals have been thrown into legal limbo at their very first outing. In April, the first detainee to be charged under the system, David Hicks, reached a plea-bargain deal, thus avoiding trial.

However, Ms Huskey said that amid the confusion, one thing appeared clear.

The detainees, held without charge since 2002, were likely to face further prolonged delays before ever having their day in court.

"What it does mean for Omar and all the detainees is that they are going to have a whole new process so that everyone can be charged," Ms Huskey said.

Mr Khadr's case had been controversial even before today's decision. Mr Khadr, now 20, was just 15-years-old at the time of his capture outside the Afghan town of Khost. He was accused of throwing a grenade that killed a Special Forces medic, Christopher Speer, and had faced charges of attempted murder.

However, military officials claim that his indoctrination began at the age of 10, when his late father, a known associate of Osama bin Laden, moved the family to Pakistan, and later Afghanistan.

His trial had put the Bush administration in the embarrassing position of being among a handful of countries willing to put child soldiers on trial, and of holding children under the same conditions as adult prisoners who were allegedly hardcore terrorists.

Though Mr Khadr's immediate future remained uncertain today, his family said they were pleased at the move.

"We're very happy about it," Mr Khadr's sister, Zaynab, told the CBC, Canada's state broadcaster, in Toronto. "We're surprised."



Looks like the horror of Gitmo is hopefully starting to unravel.

[Swarmlord]

Looks like the horror of Gitmo is hopefully starting to unravel.

I doubt it. Hopefully he's rehabilitated by the experience.

[skunk]

I doubt it. Hopefully he's rehabilitated by the experience.I'd love to hear how being held without charge for five years is likely to "rehabilitate" anyone. Would it do that for you?

[.Andy]

I doubt it. Hopefully he's rehabilitated by the experience.
Yeah rehabilitated from being innocent to........

[solvs]

I doubt it. Hopefully he's rehabilitated by the experience.

Rehabilitated? From what? He was innocent! :confused: A lot of them are.

But no, if he and his didn't already hate the US enough, this will do it. Some of you wonder why people hate us. I'd say this doesn't help. Multiply that by everyone else we're incarcerating, mutilating, killing the family and friends of. Wonder how you'd feel if it was you or yours.

Sorry, I forgot, it's ok because Muslims are bad and we're so much more civilized, the guy probably deserved it. :rolleyes:

[Swarmlord]

Yeah rehabilitated from being innocent to........

Hmm. Grenade throwing murderer and that makes him innocent.

Face it, the only reason he's getting out is due to a glitch in terminology, not because this kid is innocent.

[miloblithe]

Hmm. Grenade throwing murderer and that makes him innocent.

Face it, the only reason he's getting out is due to a glitch in terminology, not because this kid is innocent.

However, military officials claim that his indoctrination began at the age of 10, when his late father, a known associate of Osama bin Laden, moved the family to Pakistan, and later Afghanistan.

Was he innocent at 10?

[geese]

Hmm. Grenade throwing murderer and that makes him innocent.


And the evidence of him being a 10 year old murderer is.... where exactly?

[Swarmlord]

And the evidence of him being a 10 year old murderer is.... where exactly?

The people that watched him chuck the grenade and then chased him down and apprehended him. Does everything have to be a video clip on YouTube to be believed anymore? Geez.

I guess it's easier to believe that American soldiers just spontaneously explode.

[adroit]

Hmm. Grenade throwing murderer and that makes him innocent.


Hmm, what are american soldiers throwing? Peaches?

[LethalWolfe]

Face it, the only reason he's getting out is due to a glitch in terminology, not because this kid is innocent.
Ironic isn't it. This administration spent a lot of time and energy rewriting, repealing, reinterpreting, weaseling around, and/or exploiting technicalities in national and international laws to try and make it seem just and lawful to torture people and detain them indefinitely w/o proper, if any, access to legal council and now it is a technicality that may be the beginning of the end for this dark spot in US history.


Does everything have to be a video clip on YouTube to be believed anymore? Geez.
Funny statement coming from someone who can be shown things like this:
Yes. Innocent. Absolutely 100% innocent people are held in Guantanamo.

Who says so? It is the official position of the United States military. Is that good enough? Is that unimpeachable enough? When even the U.S. government, has officially declared these people innocent?

Exhibit #1

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0213/p03s03-usju.html

[I]"Innocent, but in limbo at Guantánamo

Five Chinese Muslims, captured in Pakistan by mistake, try to get the US Supreme Court to take their case.

They shouldn't be there. Even the US military has found that the men, members of the besieged Uighur ethnic group, are not enemy combatants. But their ordeal in custody isn't over. Because they could face harsh treatment back in China - and the US doesn't want to set a precedent by granting them asylum here - they sit in a barracks-like detention center waiting for a country to give them a home.
.
.
.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0511-04.htm

"Most 'Arrested by Mistake'
Coalition intelligence put numbers at 70% to 90% of Iraq prisoners, says a February Red Cross report, which details further abuses."

and respond with this:
I read it. I find it very hard to believe that we man and maintain that place full of these so called innocent people though. If it's true, then it won't be much longer before they're returned to their country of origin.


Lethal

[Queso]

I guess it's easier to believe that American soldiers just spontaneously explode.
It's a shame their Commander in Chief doesn't lead by example.

[skunk]

I guess it's easier to believe that American soldiers just spontaneously explode.It isn't a question of what you believe. It's called "Due Process". Suck it up, as you Americans seem to be inordinately fond of saying.

[solvs]

I guess it's easier to believe that American soldiers just spontaneously explode.

No, it's just easier to believe we have the wrong people far too many times. Probably because we have the wrong people far too many times. Just like, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it's easier for you to believe every one we've captured is guilty. Even if they aren't.

Ironic that we may have gotten one of the guilty ones, but had to let them go because of our screws ups and pulling resources for the wrong ones.

[TheAnswer]

Alguien necesita decir a los pinche "chavs" del periódico The Guardian como poner el acento en "Guantánamo". Gracias al "OP" por ponerlo correctamente.

[CanadaRAM]

Hmm. Grenade throwing murderer and that makes him innocent.

Face it, the only reason he's getting out is due to a glitch in terminology, not because this kid is innocent.

No.
Grenade throwing soldier in a time of war. That is what soldiers do, and does not warrant being charged with war crimes.

Innocent of charges brought because
1) the charges brought were invalid, and
2) shooting and grenadeing whilst in a firefight are accepted activities under the rules of warfare (Duh!)

The US tries to maintain the fiction that there is no war, and no organized opposing "army", therefore anyone that the US Army engages is, ipso facto, an "illegal combatant" aka a terrorist. Meaning, of course that the US assigns themselves the right to detain without charges the ones they don't kill. And that since there is no "war", then the detainees are not prisoners of war, and therefore have no rights under the Geneva convention. Then of course somebody slips up and calls the detainees what they really are, soldiers, and the house of cards collapses.

Keep in mind that this 15 year old was also shot, seriously wounded and lost an eye to injuries sustained when the USAF bombed the #*$* out of him, too.

But let's say you are right - by your definiton, then, there are tens of thousands of grenade-throwing, machine-gun-firing, mine-exploding murderers on the loose in Iraq. All of them indoctrinated in organized training camps, most of them foreign fighters for hire, in Iraq to fight for the cause of their leader. And all of them wearing the Stars and Stripes.

[it5five]

As if Guantanamo wasn't a complete disaster already (which is something the left has known for ages), I was listening to NPR today when they were talking to an ex-interrogator. He used to work at Gitmo, and wrote a book about the torture and complete ineffectiveness of the interrogation procedures of this country.

Link to the show description

Listen to the segment. It'll do some of you righties some good.

[hulugu]

Hmm. Grenade throwing murderer and that makes him innocent.

Face it, the only reason he's getting out is due to a glitch in terminology, not because this kid is innocent.

Well, first he was 15 at the time and therefore already occupies some strange legal state, but the problem is also one of how the military tribunals are supposed to work with the US legal framework, civilian or military, not to mention the inherent schism with the Geneva Convention.

Furthermore, I find it interesting that you continue to support this travesty of justice considering other dyed in the wool conservatives, including John Ashcroft, General Petraeus and Robert Gates have expressed specific concerns about the practice.

I'm not going to go as far as call the kid 'innocent' but I fail to see how years in Gitmo and a military tribunal are going to do anything but turn this kid into a hardened operative.

[solvs]

And all of them wearing the Stars and Stripes.
Not all of them. Some of them wear black. And get paid a lot better. With no oversight.

But they do, technically, work for the US gov... so your point is made, but it's even worse than you mentioned.

[mactastic]

So if Hollyweird made a movie where a young American was caught up in a foreign occupier's prison system for little to no charge, would that movie end with said prisoner gaining gloriously explosive revenge upon his former captors?

Or would it end with said American being labeled a terrorist and locked away forever?

[Swarmlord]

<snip>
But let's say you are right - by your definiton, then, there are tens of thousands of grenade-throwing, machine-gun-firing, mine-exploding murderers on the loose in Iraq. All of them indoctrinated in organized training camps, most of them foreign fighters for hire, in Iraq to fight for the cause of their leader. And all of them wearing the Stars and Stripes.

No, we're there in cooperation with the elected government of Iraq. If they were capable of organically enforcing their own laws and security, we'd be out of there in a flash - at least the majority of troops. I have no doubt that we'll maintain a presence there for some time.

[Queso]

No, we're there in cooperation with the elected government of Iraq.
Don't make me laugh. So the gravy trainers let you stay do they? And what about co-operation outside the Green Zone?

The US in Iraq is exactly like the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and it looks like it will end the same way.

[Thanatoast]

No, we're there in cooperation with the elected government of Iraq. If they were capable of organically enforcing their own laws and security, we'd be out of there in a flash - at least the majority of troops. I have no doubt that we'll maintain a presence there for some time.

lol. The Iraqi parliement voted last month, asking us to leave.

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country's civil conflict, and at times it's been difficult to arrive at a quorum).link (http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51624/)

an even better, more recent, and more damning link (http://www.alternet.org/story/53230/)

[mactastic]

Not to mention that when we got there the government in place at the time didn't want us there.

What a weak argument!

[skunk]

No, we're there in cooperation with the elected government of Iraq. If they were capable of organically enforcing their own laws and security, we'd be out of there in a flash - at least the majority of troops.You just make up this crap as you go along, don't you? Black is the new white. Shameless and indefensible. You surely can't believe half the stuff you come out with.

[solvs]

No, we're there in cooperation with the elected government of Iraq. If they were capable of organically enforcing their own laws and security, we'd be out of there in a flash - at least the majority of troops. I have no doubt that we'll maintain a presence there for some time.

They want us to leave, as noted above. So do the Iraqi people. Both by a large majority. You do know that only about 7&#37; (or less) of the insurgents are foreigners right? A large majority of our own people want us out too. Not to mention the rest of the world.

Congratulations, you're one of the few who actually wants us to stay. For some reason. Why aren't you there yourself again?