[prisoner-rights] USA: Rulings show Guantanamo experiment failed

Military Commission Cases Should Move to Federal Court

(Guantanamo Bay, June 4, 2007) -- The dismissal by military judges of two
cases before military commissions should persuade the Bush administration
to end its failed judicial experiment at Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights
Watch said today.

On June 4, 2007 the judges dismissed charges against Omar Khadr, who was
only 15 when he was apprehended in Afghanistan, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan,
who was allegedly Osama bin Laden's driver, saying the government had
failed to establish jurisdiction over the cases. The military commissions,
established by Congress last year, are empowered to try "unlawful enemy
combatants," but Khadr and Hamdan -- and almost 400 other detainees at
Guantanamo -- have been classified only as "enemy combatants."

"If the Bush administration had any sense, this ruling would signal the
death of the military commissions," said Jennifer Daskal, US advocacy
director at Human Rights Watch. "Today's decisions show that Washington's
effort to create a parallel justice system in Guantanamo has failed."

Since late 2001, when the Bush administration first announced military
commissions to try the detainees at Guantanamo, only one person has been
prosecuted by a commission. David Hicks, who pleaded guilty in March 2007
to one count of providing material support to terrorism, has since
returned home to Australia to serve a nine-month sentence.

"In the five years it has taken the military commissions to prosecute one
person, the federal courts have successfully prosecuted hundreds of
terrorism cases, including dozens of international terrorism cases," said
Daskal. "It's time to move these cases to a tried and true system that
works."

Human Rights Watch Press release