|
What a mess. Injustice can breed many outcomes but rarely has it given life to the chaotic and bizarre scenes we are now witnessing at Guantanamo.
When military judges threw out all charges against a detainee held there since he was 15 and dismissed charges against another detainee who chauffeured Osama Bin Laden, they displayed common sense and a knowledge of the law that has been sorely lacking.
In back-to-back arraignments for the Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmad Hamdan, a Yemeni national, the US military's cases against the alleged Al Qaida figures were dismissed because, the judges said, the government had failed to establish jurisdiction. And that's the point that applies to all prisoners in Guantanamo, not just the two who were the focus of this ruling.
The defendants had been charged as "enemy combatants'', not "unlawful enemy combatants'', the term used by Congress last year in authorising the tribunals. It is obvious that none of the 385 other detainees at Guantanamo, held for more than five years without charge, can be brought to trial before the tribunals because they fall in the same category.
It exposes the hastiness with which Congress moved in October to bring in legislation authorising the tribunals after the Supreme Court threw out the earlier version.
Now, once again barely a year later, the tribunals have been thrown into legal limbo at their first outing. In April, the first Guantanamo detainee to be charged, David Hicks, reached a plea bargain deal, thus avoiding trial. If anyone in Guantanamo has a case to answer, then a court martial or civilian court is where justice should be seen to be done. But after five years and no charges, it is time for the farce to end and time for real justice to start in American courts not based in Cuba.
|
