Gitmo: Kangaroo courts

Excuse me, but off the record, Gitmo is a complete sham.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- An Army officer who played a key role in the "enemy combatant" hearings at Guantanamo Bay says tribunal members relied on vague and incomplete intelligence while being pressured to rule against detainees, often without any specific evidence.

His affidavit, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and released Friday, is the first criticism by a member of the military panels that determine whether detainees will continue to be held.

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence who is an Army reserve officer and a California lawyer, said military prosecutors were provided with only "generic" material that didn't hold up to the most basic legal challenges.

Despite repeated requests, intelligence agencies arbitrarily refused to provide specific information that could have helped either side in the tribunals, said Abraham, who said he served as a main liaison between the Combat Status Review Tribunals and the intelligence agencies.

"What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence," Abraham said in the affidavit submitted on behalf of a Kuwaiti detainee, Fawzi al-Odah, who is challenging his classification as an "enemy combatant."

Abraham's affidavit "proves what we all suspected, which is that the CSRTs were a complete sham," said a lawyer for al-Odah, David Cynamon.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/06/23/guantanamo.ap/index.html

But I'm sure FOX News has something to say about that:

A teenage girl who was banned by her school from wearing a "purity ring" is taking her case to the High Court.

Lydia Playfoot, 16, is a member of a Christian group called the Silver Ring Thing and one of a number of students at the Millais School in Horsham, West Sussex, who wears a silver ring engraved with a Biblical reference — "1 Thes 434," a reference to St. Paul's Letter to the Thessalonians — as a sign of their belief in abstinence from sex until marriage.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,286395,00.html

Or, you know, not (note: I was originally going to just ignore FOX News, but I find it much more gratifying to mock them).

But back to the topic at hand, CNN International has this story:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.

Both the Pentagon and the White House denied Thursday evening there were any plans to close the facility.

President Bush's national security and legal advisers are expected to discuss the move at the White House on Friday and, for the first time, it appears a consensus is developing, senior administration officials said Thursday.

The advisers will consider a new proposal to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum security military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where they could face trial, said the officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal deliberations.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/06/21/guantanamo.ap/index.html

This is huge, if true. Moving terror suspects from Gitmo to Leavenworth would eliminate the legal cover for torture and the sort of kangaroo courts we've been seeing from them so far. I'll make sure to keep tabs on this story as it develops.