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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- Sep. 6, 2004. 01:00 AMDetainee hearings descend into farce http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1094249412481 The Bush administration is ignoring, if not defying outright, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that all terror suspects must be able to challenge their imprisonment. The opening round of detainee military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay last week resembled something between a Mel Brooks farce and the kangaroo courts of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Maybe Captain Kangaroo courts. The proceedings didn't look anything like justice, military or otherwise. Meanwhile, two U.S. citizens still sit in military brigs, isolated from their lawyers and months if not years away from the hearings the high court says they deserve. The U.S. criminal justice system, including its military stepchild, is supposed to stand for due process, impartiality and openness. These are the same principles, after all, that U.S. troops are fighting � and dying � to seed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the slapdash preliminary hearings for the first four of some 600 Guantanamo detainees violated basic tenets of fairness. The tribunals are an ad hoc invention, authorized by President Bush three years ago when he rejected the established military court-martial system and the federal criminal courts, either of which would have worked more smoothly. The tribunal's chief officer is a retired Army judge, the only member of the panel with legal training. He is both the judge and a jury member, ruling on motions and voting with the five other commissioners. In a criminal court, the lay jury decides the facts and the judge rules on questions of law. Here, however, tribunal members decide on both. Yet the five nonlawyers were clearly befuddled last week when asked to define concepts such as due process and reasonable doubt. The cards are stacked against detainees in other ways, too. Government prosecutors got spacious quarters and their own staff to prepare for the hearings. Military defence lawyers were crowded into one room. Midway through the week, the conference table they all shared was removed. No photographic, video or audio recordings of the hearings will be released. From the government's perspective, perhaps the less that Americans know of these bumbling proceedings, the less they'll care. The two U.S. citizens that Bush has labelled as enemy combatants, Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, haven't gotten even this much. Years after their arrests, each remains in a military brig, often in solitary confinement. Even after the Supreme Court's declaration that they have a right to a hearing, government lawyers outrageously are fighting every lower court petition filed by lawyers retained by the men's families. And still the government has filed no charges against Hamdi or Padilla. The Supreme Court made itself clear in its June rulings: Terror suspects are entitled to at least bare-bones due process. For government lawyers to insist otherwise is unprecedented. This is an edited excerpt of an editorial from the Washington Post. ----------------------------------------------- The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon <http://www.encyclopediaindex.com/b/psrev10.htm>http://www.encyclopediaindex.com/b/psrev10.htm The aim of these considerations is to recall to the reader the fact that the outward events of revolutions are always a consequence of invisible transformations which have slowly gone forward in men's minds. Any profound study of a revolution necessitates a study of the mental soil upon which the ideas that direct its course have to germinate. -Gustave le Bon ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <FONT COLOR="#000099">Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! </FONT><A HREF="http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/aQSolB/TM";><B>Click Here!</B></A> --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ---------------------------------- Smash The State WWW http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smashthestate Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smashthestate/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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