[Peace-discuss] Smoke, mirrors and American justice

[Morton K. Brussel]

From:  http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/victoria_brittain/2008/02/ 
smoke_mirrors_and_american_justice.html

Six key Guantánamo detainees are to undergo trial by military  
commission. But having been tortured, how can they expect a fair trial?
Victoria Brittain


The announcement by the Pentagon of trials by military commission for  
six of the big-name prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, is the latest in the  
series of smoke-and-mirror tricks used by the Bush administration to  
cover the inhuman illegality of the regime in the prison.

The issue is straightforward: the men cannot receive fair trials.

In these first cases linked to 9/11, prosecutors will seek the death  
penalty for the six men, who include the self-declared mastermind of  
the 9/11 attacks, and of other al-Qaida attacks such as the east  
African US embassy bombings and the murder of journalist Daniel  
Pearl, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The best-known of the other five defendants are Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a  
Yemeni, said to have been the intermediary between the hijackers and  
al-Qaida, and Mohammed al-Qahtani, believed originally to have been  
the 20th hijacker for 9/11, although he failed to make it into the US.

The immediate problem for the holding of any successful trial of  
these men is that they are known to have been severely tortured by  
the CIA and contractors working for them. No evidence obtained by  
torture is admissible in any court, and senior US lawyers are lining  
up to make all necessary legal challenges to the government.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for instance, is one of three men (the others  
are Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri) who the CIA has  
recently admitted were tortured with "waterboarding" by their  
operatives.

The descriptions of this technique of simulated drowning, carried out  
in secret prisons halfway round the world, are the stuff of  
nightmares. It is torture, and that is outlawed under international  
law. No words of excuse from the powerful can change that. And to see  
the CIA chief, Michael Hayden, in Congress openly justify  
waterboarding, is to see how far the war on terror has degraded the  
American government and its complicit allies here.

In the case of al-Qahtani, Time magazine published the secret log of  
his 49 days of 20-hour-per-day interrogation. The log described how  
the prisoner was forcibly administered intravenous fluids and drugs  
and forcibly given enemas, in order to keep his body functioning well  
enough for the interrogations to go on.

The log, titled Secret Orcon Interrogation Log Detainee 063 (pdf),  
offered a daily, detailed view of the interrogation techniques used  
to get confessions from him from November 2002 to January 2003. These  
included:

• Restraint on a swivel chair for long periods;
• Deprivation of sleep for long periods;
• Loud music and white noise played to prevent him from sleeping;
• Various humiliations, such as training him to act as a dog and  
wrapping him in an Israeli flag;
• Lowering the temperature in the room, then throwing water into his  
face;
• Forcing him to pray to Osama bin Laden.

Under this torture, not surprisingly, al-Qahtani made many false  
confessions, and implicated other prisoners. Later he withdrew all  
this, according to his lawyer.

Besides the issue of torture, the very system of military commissions  
has had a credibility problem from the start. The commissions have  
been beset by legal challenges, which went right to the supreme  
court, as well as by criticism from the military lawyers meant to  
work in them. Although officials have spoken of charging 80 or more  
detainees with war crimes, so far only one case has been completed,  
that of David Hicks, an Australian and the only non-Muslim in  
Guantánamo. That ended with a plea bargain, which included a gagging  
order.

Over six years 1,000 prisoners have been held without trial - despite  
supreme court orders that their cases should be heard in federal  
courts. The men have been kept away from the courts by the US  
military, the justice department and the White House, because most  
would never be convicted of any crime.

Outrageously, covering up this history, the Pentagon propaganda teams  
are now comparing their military commissions for the 9/11 suspects  
favourably to the Nuremberg trials after the second world war. The  
American justice system is once again taking a body blow from the  
Bush administration.
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