Posted on 02/28/2006 3:34:57 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
Confronting the defendants at the Guantanamo tribunals with the evidence against them will be like dragging vampires into the sunlight, the chief prosecutor said on Tuesday.
The cases of two Guantanamo captives charged with conspiring with Al Qaeda to attack civilians, commit murder and destroy property will begin pre-trial hearings on Wednesday.
A scheduled hearing for a third defendant was delayed at the request of his military lawyer, who sought more time to prepare his case.
The tribunals are the first held by the United States since World War II and convened in August 2004, over two-and-a-half years after the first prisoners were brought to the detention camp in Cuba as part of the US war on terrorism.
Defence attorneys sued to halt the tribunals, which they consider fundamentally unfair for numerous reasons.
These include the use of secret evidence that defendants will not be allowed to see and the potential use of evidence obtained through torture.
The chief prosecutor, Air Force Colonel Moe Davis, blamed the delays on the detainees and their lawyers and compared them to movie vampires.
"Remember if you dragged Dracula out into the sunlight he melted. Well that's kind of the way it is trying to drag a detainee into the courtroom," he said.
"The facts are like the sunlight to Dracula. The last thing they want is to face the facts in the courtroom."
Only 10 of the 500 Guantanamo prisoners have been charged with crimes and Wednesday's session will be the fourth round of pre-trial hearings to formally read charges and address issues such as which attorneys will represent the defendants.
None of the cases has gone to trial and prosecutors said none will until after the US Supreme Court rules next summer on whether President George W Bush had authority to create the tribunals to try foreign terrorism suspects after the September 11 attacks.
US judges have halted three of the 10 Guantanamo cases pending the Supreme Court ruling and lawyers for some of the other seven said they might ask for stays.
Legal and human rights monitors visiting Guantanamo called the tribunals, formally known as commissions, an ad hoc system with no underlying law.
They said any charges against the prisoners should be brought in civilian courts or the military courts-martial system, which have long established rules.
Australian citizen David Hicks has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002.
The 30-year-old convert to Islam was captured in Afghanistan where he allegedly fought alongside the ruling Taliban against US-led forces who invaded after the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
He faces charges of conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy.
Give them a quick fair trial, a last meal and hang them before it can digest.
Like Vampires??? That defames vampires.
The last meal should, naturally, be pork and served by force.
Legal and human rights monitors... said any charges against the prisoners should be brought in civilian courts
Federal Courtrooms? Criminal Prosecutions? We're crazy if we fold to these terrorist-loving anal compulsives! As Mark Steyn says, we will lose this war if we continue in that vein!
I wonder how long it would have taken us to "prosecute" all those Jap and Nazi POWs? Would we still be tied up in Court, or would we have given up the War in exhaustion after we spent all our military budget on defense lawyers?
Ash wood stake through the heart. Hanging does not work on vampires, and silver bullets are too expensve.
Beheading works as well and the irony would be priceless.
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