Fundamental injustice

While the U.S.' hand-selected Guantanamo tour groups have done their best to try to defend the complete lack of access to justice for detainees, the truth about the pitiful process made available to detainees is set to come out:

The U.S. military called no witnesses, withheld evidence from prisoners and usually reached a decision within a day as it determined hundreds of men held at Guantanamo Bay were "enemy combatants," a new report said...

The military held Combatant Status Review Tribunals for 558 prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in southeastern Cuba between July 2004 and January 2005 and found all but 38 were enemy combatants. Handcuffed prisoners appeared before a panel of three officers with no defence lawyer, only a military "personal representative."

The report noted the representatives said nothing in the hearings 14 per cent of the time and made no "substantive" comments in 30 per cent. In some cases, the representative even appeared to advocate the government's position, the report said...

Twenty-one first-year law students at Seton Hall University in Newark, N.J., analyzed the documents to create a database analyzed by eight second-and third-year students.

Among their findings:

-The government did not produce any witnesses in any hearing.
-The military denied all prisoner requests to inspect the classified evidence against them.
-The military refused all requests for defence witnesses who were not detained at Guantanamo.
-In 74 per cent of the cases, the government denied requests to call witnesses who were detained at the prison.
-In 91 per cent of the hearings, the prisoners did not present any evidence.
-In three cases, the panel found the prisoner was "no longer an enemy combatant" but the military convened new tribunals that later found them to be enemy combatants.

The latter point is particularly laughable given the complete lack of access to any appeal or review procedure for the detainees: while the party whose freedom has been affected has received absolutely no second chances, the captors apparently haven't hesitated to ignore even what few favourable findings could possibly come out of such a flawed process.

Fortunately, the analysis of the process as a whole should put to rest any pretence that the detainees have received anything close to a reasonable opportunity to counter the arbitrary branding imposed on them by Bushco. Or at least, among those commentators who are more interested in addressing the truth of the treatment of Guantanamo's prisoners than in being part of the next super-special tour group.