MB Civic

Miami Herald
Posted on Sat, Nov. 18, 2006

GUANTANAMO BAY
Critics assail Pentagon plan for terror trials
Guantnamo critics reacted with anger at the Pentagon’s plan to build a
compound for war-crimes trials, before the new rules are announced and any
civilian court challenges.
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com

Critics of the Guantnamo Bay detention center Friday reacted with fury to
Pentagon plans to build a major compound for war-crimes trials at the U.S.
Navy base in Cuba — deriding project as a ”white elephant” and urging its
rejection by Congress.

”Once again, the Defense Department seems to be operating in — even
constructing — its own universe,” said Larry Cox, executive director of
Amnesty International’s U.S. division.

New York civil liberties lawyer Michael Ratner called the proposed compound,
which could cost as much as $125 million, “another huge waste of taxpayer
money . . . to carry out kangaroo trials that will never pass constitutional
muster.”

The Miami Herald on Thursday uncovered a Defense Department notice to
would-be military contractors that sets forth its vision for the legal
compound. which is meant to provide housing, meals and working space for up
to 1,200 people at the first U.S. war crimes trials since World War II.

It set a July 2007 deadline for the project, although Congress has yet to
fund or authorize the project.

CONGRESS’ OK NEEDED

The Defense Department, in fact, must still formally present Congress with
the proposal, which according to the ”presolicitation notice” was posted
Nov. 3.

Moreover, the Bush administration is still rewriting its formula before
resuming military commissions at the detention center. The U.S. Supreme
Court earlier declared as unconstitutional the original commissions.
Congress only recently reauthorized a new court, and the Pentagon has yet to
make any announcements concerning a new court or to or announce new charges
against any prisoners who would be defendants.

”Yet the Pentagon wants to build a permanent homage to its failed
experiment in second-class justice,” Amnesty International’s Cox said.

”Rather than wasting tons of money creating edifices that may prove to be a
white elephant,” he added, “the U.S. government should use the
sophisticated and fully adequate facilities already available to it to try
terrorism suspects — federal courts.”

Attorneys who work for the 430 or so alleged al Qaeda and Taliban captives
at Guantnamo Bay held as ”enemy combatants,” are also challenging the
nearly five-year Guantnamo enterprise on several fronts.

Ratner’s Center for Constitutional Rights has filed hundreds of habeas
corpus petitions in U.S. District Court in Washington, on behalf of
Guantnamo prisoners, past and present, challenging their detention.

Congress this year stripped that court of the power to hear the petitions
and created an alternative review method, which lawyers are also challenging
in the courts.

Once the Pentagon publishes its commissions formula, more challenges are
also expected.

POLITICAL SEA CHANGE

Still unclear is whether the Defense Department will find a sponsor and
funding mechanism in the so-called lame duck Congress, controlled by the GOP
— or whether it will wait until Democrats take control of both houses in
January.

Ratner urged Congress not to fund the proposal, and asked the U.S. to close
the offshore detention center.

”An offshore Devil’s Island has no place in a country that claims it abides
by the rule of law,” Ratner said. “The test now is to see if the Democrats
cut the funding off for this human rights abomination.”

Meantime, the Pentagon has yet to name a replacement for a key supervisor of
the war-crimes trial process, called “the appointing authority.”

John Altenburg, a retired U.S. Army major general and a litigator in
Washington, had held the job for almost three years. He returned to private
practice at the firm of Greenberg, Traurig on Nov. 10, said Army Maj. Beth
Kubala, a spokeswoman for the Office of Military CommissionsNo replacement
has been chosen.

Kubala said Altenburg had originally signed on to the job for “12 to 18
months to establish the system and refer initial cases to trial.”

No trial ever got past preliminary proceedings.