The ACLU’s Ben Wizner, who’s observing the Guantanamo Military Commission sessions that resumed last Wednesday, has been blogging his work there. It looks like good reading. You can comment either there or here.
Update, Sunday evening:
I hope you’ve all gone over and read some of Wizner’s blog. It’s the best window I’ve found so far into what’s going on inside Gitmo.
In this post from last Wednesday, for example, he says that the chief prosecutor in the “Military Commissions” there told him and his colleagues from three other NGOs that more than four years after the opening of Gitmo, interrogations there are still continuing. Of course, we don’t know whether these are still of the highly abusive sort reported from Gitmo earlier– the authorities have refused to allow the NGO reps to visit any prisoners or their living quarters; and I believe the ICRC also has problems getting access to detainees.
This, at the time that the former commander of the Gitmo detention center, Gen. Geoffrey Miller, has just recently taken “Article 31”, that is, the military-law equivalent of the Fifth Amendment, to justify his refusal to testify in a torture-related case.
In this post from Thursday, Wizner gives a good, fairly detailed description of two MC cases that he sat in on.
One was definitely Kafka-esque. The defendant, Yemeni Ali Hamza Al-Bahlul, started off by citing nine reasons why he had decided to boycott the hearing. I guess Wizner was working with an interpreter, and he understood these reasons only partially. But one was “Because of discrimination based on nationality . . . . The British detainees were not subjected to military trials, because Britain refused to allow its citizens, even Muslims, to be tried”; another was because of “the secret evidence issue”.
Wizner reports that Presiding Officer Peter Brownback then said,
- “Please, before you boycott… can I ask you one more thing?” Al Bahlul put his hands in front of his face, then removed his headset.
After a recess, Brownback formally denied al Bahlul’s previous request to represent himself – reasoning, oddly, that al Bahlul’s boycott rendered him “incompetent” to represent himself. (This was circular: the Commission’s refusal to permit al Bahlul to represent himself was almost certainly a principal cause of the boycott.) Brownback then ordered Tom Fleener to sit at counsel table and to state his credentials.
Fleener did so and then immediately moved to withdraw as defense counsel, explaining that al Bahlul didn’t want him as a lawyer, and ethical rules required that he not participate against the wishes of a client. Fleener had sought guidance from the state bars of Iowa and Wyoming, where he is licensed to practice, and had not yet received responses. Brownback denied the request. “You are de facto and de jure the only counsel Mr. Al Bahlul has, and as he pointed out earlier, it is him against the United States. You are the only one on his side.” The result is that proceedings in al Bahlul’s case will continue, though al Bahlul refuses to speak to — or even look at — his defense counsel.
Anyway: to have Wizner blogging a hearing like this is great. In near-real time, too. I’m sure that if Rebecca West or Hannah Arendt were alive today, they would be down at Gitmo blogging it. H’mm, maybe I should find a way to get there…. once I finish this Africa book.
you write: “H’mm, maybe I should find a way to get there…. once I finish this Africa book.”
The saddest part is that if we don’t become more effective bush-whackers,you probably have plenty
of time.
Like the rest of your life.
Helena — Thanks for the words of encouragement. I, too, thought of Arendt, and more than once stopped myself from using the word “banal.” The role of observer is an awkward one for a litigator, but I now think the ACLU has an important role to play in the propaganda control room of Gitmo. Again, thanks. –Ben Wizner
Ben, I believe that any non-governmental observers who can get access to the hearing-room(s) there are playing a crucial “eyes and ears” role there for the world community. It is possible, though by no means certain, that the presence of such observers might also give some shred of reassurance to the detainees themselves that their fate is not totally unknown to the world outside.
Thanks too for the tip-off to Carol Rosenberg’s work. I must go over to the M. Herald website and read some of her pieces when I have the time. (Could you give us links to a couple of her pieces that you’ve found particularly illuminating?)
Btw, sorry about the trouble you had posting your comment here. My spam-filtering here takes a long time to chug through the site each time, so it can take a couple of minutes for the comments to post. It ain’t quite “real-time” communication!
Helena, take a look at Carol’s wrap-up piece from yesterday: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/13628379.htm. It gives a good sense of just how aggressively the military defense lawyers are attacking these kangaroo courts. –Ben
Helena — thanks for turning me on to Ben’s work. After reading his blogging, I also found this which purports to be a letter from an al-Jazeera camera man held at Gitmo. I haven’t read anything that proves to me that it really got out from this source, but it seems internally believable. Can you or Ben or anyone authenticate it?
Janinsanfran,
I am the blogger who put up this article. It comes directly from the Arab portion of the Al Jazeerah site. I am part of a translations collective that searches out material, translates it into the various languages and diffuses it. We try as much as is possible to be sure that the texts we do are either: verified by the author (approved), or by the source, if we cannot contact the author.