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This month Greg Bowes reviews Tortured Justice: Guantanamo Bay by Richard Kammen.
Release Draft Commission Rules For Public Comment, Experts Say - Washington, DC (April 7, 2010) – This week, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers joined a group including eight other organizations and prominent scholars calling for more transparency and a period for public comment regarding the release of the 2010 Manual for Military Commissions by the Department of Defense.
As a new round of military commission trials takes shape at Guantanamo Bay, an important piece of unfinished business is revision of the Manual for Military Commissions. The 2010 Manual will spell out the specifics of proceedings under the Military Commissions Act of 2009. The Department of Defense has been working on this revision for some time but has not made a draft available for public comment, even though doing so is the norm for both federal court and court-martial rule making. An opportunity for public comment may produce improvements in the final text.
This month Jon M. Sands reviews Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo by Mansoor Adayfi in collaboration with Antonio Aiello.
In light of Attorney General Holder’s April 4, 2011, announcement regarding the prosecution of the alleged planners and co-conspirators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the undersigned organizations request that the Department of Defense open the process for issuing regulations for the military commissions to allow meaningful pre-promulgation public participation. Certainly, future commissions will result in intensive public scrutiny of the system. Therefore, the Department should uphold the President's promise of openness in government by reforming the military commission rulemaking process.
Thank you for your letters to Secretary Panetta dated July 5, 2011 and October 3, 2011, concerning military commission proceedings and related issues of access by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The Department of Defense is committed to making military commission proceedings transparent and accessible to the public, consistent with protecting national security, the safety of individuals, and the rights of the accused. … Recently, we have been working to improve public access to military commission proceedings and materials.
We strongly urge you to veto the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA) — if the conference bill, which is being negotiated now, impedes your ability to close Guantanamo. Specifically, we urge you to veto the NDAA conference bill if it restricts the Executive Branch's authority to transfer detainees for repatriation or resettlement in foreign countries or for prosecution in federal criminal court. … We urge you to veto the NDAA if any of these restrictions are included in the final bill sent to you by Congress.
Statement of Members of the Human Rights and Secruity Coalition before the Senate Judiciary Committee
Our coalition seeks to ensure that the United States’ national security policies abide by its human rights obligations. It does so by promoting transparency, accountability, and oversight in furtherance of our collective human security.
The undersigned civil liberties and human rights organizations write regarding the Periodic Review Boards (PRBs) for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that the Department of Defense has announced will commence shortly. …should the administration proceed with PRBs, we encourage you to take appropriate steps to ensure the PRBs, as established by Presidential Executive Order 13567, have the required processes in place for meaningful review of a detainee’s detention status at Guantanamo.
The undersigned human rights, civil liberties, and religious organizations strongly urge you to oppose any additional restrictions on the authority of the Secretary of Defense to order the overseas transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to foreign countries. ... Congress should not reverse course when the overseas transfer provisions have only recently taken effect and the Departments of Defense and State are working towards carrying out transfers.
NACDL urges this Court to grant Petitioners' motions challenging the Government's Memorandum of Understanding Governing Continued Contact Between Counsel/Translator and Detainee Following Termination of the [Guantánamo] Detainee's Habeas Case. NACDL also encourages this Court to hold that Judge Hogan's Protective Order continues to apply to Petitioners, and that the Government may not condition Petitioners' access to counsel on counsel's submission to the new MOU.
We are writing to follow up on the letter we sent in July concerning the logistical difficulties that in the past have prevented us from adequately performing our role as nongovernmental organizations authorized to observe military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. To date, we have not received a response to our letter. … While we are encouraged that the commission may be expanding access to the commissions for some individuals and media, this new venue would not address any of the NGO observers' concerns about the commissions' lack of transparency, as set forth in our earlier letter.
As nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) authorized to observe military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, we are writing regarding logistical difficulties that prevent us from adequately performing that role. Now that the U.S. government has decided to try those accused in the September 11, 2001 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole before military commissions, we believe that it is especially important that NGOs not only observe commission hearings, but are better able to obtain relevant documents and share our observations with the general public.
The undersigned nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) authorized to observe the military commission proceedings at Guantánamo Bay write to express our objection to new restrictions that the Department of Defense put in place this week on our ability to attend press briefings. … The information and insights we obtain from these briefings help shape our understanding of what we observe during the proceedings, and provide additional information not necessarily available from the viewing area at the back of the courtroom.
We are writing as strong supporters of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s effort to investigate and establish the facts surrounding the CIA’s detention and interrogation program in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. We urge the Committee to declassify and publicly release its 6,300 page report with as few redactions as possible. Any minority views and the response of the Central Intelligence Agency should also be made public.