First Trials before Military Tribunal scheduled

[Uli]

From CNN, law center. Perhaps a poll should be made. Will the 2 alledged Osama Bodyguards get off?

"First Guantanamo hearings in August

Friday, July 30, 2004 Posted: 12:23 PM EDT (1623 GMT)






GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Preliminary hearings for the first trials against terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay will begin next month when an Australian and three others go before a U.S. military judge, defense officials said on Friday.

Separately, the U.S. Navy Secretary signed a formal order to immediately begin annual review tribunals that will give all of the nearly 600 prisoners held at the U.S. base a chance to challenge their indefinite detention.

Most of the 594 prisoners were captured during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and have been held at Guantanamo for more than two years without access to lawyers or courts -- a "legal black hole" deplored by human rights groups and which many U.S. allies have angrily challenged.

Four prisoners will be tried at the first U.S. military tribunals -- formally called commissions -- since World War II.

Australian inmate David Hicks and three al Qaeda suspects from Yemen and Sudan are scheduled for separate pretrial hearings during the week of August 23 in a new courtroom in a prison at the Guantanamo base, defense officials in Washington told Reuters.

Retired U.S. Army Col. Peter Brownback III will hear pretrial motions, the initial legal step for the commissions.

In a separate process giving all prisoners the chance to challenge their detention, Navy Secretary Gordon England signed the order for status review tribunals in Washington and officials at the Guantanamo base said they expected to begin the first one within 24 hours.

They are part of an administrative process to determine which detainees are "enemy combatants." Those judged not to be will be returned to their home countries, Guantanamo officials said.
Fairness of hearings questioned

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the Guantanamo prisoners have the right to challenge their detention in the U.S. courts, and lawyers for several of the prisoners have filed lawsuits to begin that process.

An official at Guantanamo involved in the tribunals said the military believed these review panels would address the Supreme Court ruling.

Human rights groups and lawyers who represented the prisoners before the Supreme Court disagree. They have questioned whether the hearings could be fair because the decision is left to the military and the prisoners have no access to legal representation or classified documents.

During the "Combatant Status Review Tribunals," each prisoner will appear before a panel of three U.S. military officers who will decide their fate, and will have a chance to argue that they were wrongly detained.

Human rights groups have also charged that rules for the forthcoming military commissions are rigged to hamstring defense lawyers and produce convictions, but the Pentagon has pledged "full and fair" trials.

Hicks was charged in June with three counts: conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder and aiding the enemy. He was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, who the military says was a driver for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit murder, attacks on civilians and terrorism. The Pentagon says Hamdan provided security for bin Laden and other top members of the network that carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan were charged in February with a single count each of conspiracy to commit war crimes. The military says both were bin Laden bodyguards."