23, February 2008 Military Commissions Trials Rigged
The long term incarceration of six Guantanamo prisoners charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes has come to haunt the Pentagon. According to the Nation magazine, the trial might be rigged from the start to save the Pentagon the embarrassment of possible acquittals. The Nation reported a revealing comment made by the administration-appointed Pentagon General Counsel, William Haynes, to Colonel Davis, the former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo’s military commissions. Haynes admitted that , “we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.”
It speaks volumes that Colonel Davis resigned from the military commissions in October 2007, decrying the system had become “politicized” and ineffective. Davis’s comments cast a pall on military commission’s clear bias and claims of ensuring fair trails. In view of Hayne’s comments, the military commissions have been badly tainted and smacks too much of ‘kangaroo court proceedings’, rather than a system based on fairness and true justice. What is also most troubling is Hayes was an early advocate of using torture techniques and insisted statements made under extreme coercion could be used as evidence of guilt. Is it any surprise that the administration has been so reluctant to denounce the grotesque practice of water-boarding as torture?
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