US suspends Guantanamo trials

THE US Defence Department has suspended all military trials for "war on terror" suspects, including Australian David Hicks, at the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba. The decision, announced after the weekend suicide of three detainees, came as the US Supreme Court was expected to rule imminently on the military tribunals' legality.

"All sessions in all cases currently referred to trial by Military Commissions are stayed until further notice," the Pentagon said in a statement posted on Monday but dated Saturday, the day the three detainees were found hanged in their cells. The statement does not explain the reasons behind the suspension. Only 10 of the 460 inmates held as "enemy combatants" have been formally charged since the camp opened in early 2002 at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Among them is Hicks, who is facing a military commission trial on charges of conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy. The former Adelaide meat processor has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since soon after his capture in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 2001 attacks in the US. Hearings for some detainees were previously suspended pending a ruling from the top US court, but other sessions had continued. A decision is expected this month.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in March in a pivotal case brought by Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan that could determine the fate of the tribunals. President George W Bush's administration has come under pressure from human rights groups and even allies to close down Guantanamo. Human rights groups said the suicides showed the inmates were in a state of despair because of the indefinite nature of their detention. Before the three successful suicides on Saturday, the US military had reported 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19467601-23109,00.html

All of this just sucks so bad.

I have no idea.

"Only 10 of the 460 inmates held as 'enemy combatants' have been formally charged since the camp opened in early 2002 at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Among them is Hicks, who is facing a military commission trial on charges of conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy."

Yeah, what in the hell does that mean? And does that sword of justice come with two edges?

Well, I'm sure that Chimpy cleared it all up during his press conference this morning, right? Right?

Suspending trials at a time when the whole world is watching.

Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.

I hope there's a think tank position for the genius that thought this one up.

And it sure looks like they are doing everything they can to avoid the Supreme Court coming down on them about this one.

The Bush Cabal really hopes that Habeas Corpus becomes forgotten in the memory hole and just seen as a funny foreign word.

... would act to give a false legitimacy to these arbitrary incarcerations and this totalitarian regime. U.S. military law, the Universal Code of Military Justice, is a pre-constitutional system containing few of the safeguards that our civilian justice system has "guaranteed" under the U.S. Constitution, which established the legal basis for one of the world's first rudimentary modern democracies.

It is my layman's opinion that determining someone's guilt or innocence should be, as a matter of course, a principal of justice, not a right and certainly not a privilege; that punishing an innocent person should ideally never happen regardless of citizenship, past history or any factor other than their guilt or innocence and that we should strive with all of our assets to insure that that ideal is lived up to.

A War Criminal Chimp in Chief

and this interview with the author who has recently published a book on the history of CIA torture and GITMO.

<clips>

Hicks 'severely damaged', says CIA expert

Reporter: Tony Jones

TONY JONES: Well, Alfred McCoy is Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. In 1972 he wrote The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,, which is now regarded as a seminal work on the CIA's complicity in Asian drug trafficking. His latest book is A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror, which examines the CIA's development of psychological torture over the past 50 years. And in an article in the latest edition of the Monthly magazine, he turns his attention to the treatment of David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay, which he says must be viewed through the lens of CIA torture techniques. Well, he joins us now from Madison Wisconsin. Thanks for being there and can I first get your reaction of the suicide deaths at Guantanamo Bay on the weekend?

PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: The two statements, one by Admiral Harris and the other by the State Department official that this is an act of asymmetrical warfare, that this is a good PR stunt, is indicative of the Guantanamo mentality. Guantanamo is not a conventional military prison. It's an ad hoc laboratory for the perfection of the CIA psychological torture. Guantanamo is a complete construction. It's a system of total psychological torture, designed to break down every detainee contained therein, designed to produce a state of hopelessness and despair that leads, tragically, sadly in this case to suicide. The statements by those American officials are indicative of the cruel mentality at Guantanamo.

TONY JONES: Those are pretty dramatic statements you are making. I would have to say, though, the Red Cross is about to go and do an urgent inspection of the prison and it does appear that their reports back in 2004 do back up a lot of what you are saying. They also decided that what was happening at Guantanamo Bay amounted to a system of torture.

PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: They argued that it wasn't just isolated cases. They said that the entire system of treatment of detainees, designed to do one thing, and one thing only - extract information - constituted a system of cruelty, a system of torture. No qualification, not tantamount to torture - a phrase they'd used before - but torture per se. Confinement at Guantanamo constitutes torture. The question is, what kind of torture? It is psychological torture. Not the conventional, physical, brutal torture, but a distinctively American form of torture - psychological torture.

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1662218.htm