Fair Tribunals at Guantanamo? (Was: YANK CHILD ABUSERS :: another reason to kill americans abroad ???)

Those fellows earned themselves tickets to GTMO. They chose jihad, and
that wont always land you in paradise. Although the sunsets in Gitmo
are wonderful. GDSF Leeward side during Operation Sea Signal.

The UN isn't the answer. For the attrocities commited in Srebernetza
(Bad spelling I know) the commmands who did it landed 17 years. 17
years for killing 5,000 people. So, these little warriors of god go to
the ICC and receive what ?...... Probation ?

International Law did not do this country any good on 9-11. Now we
call the shots. Thank god we do not rely on the UN to enforce law or
will.







Henrietta K Thomas wrote in message . ..
(newsgroups trimmed way down)

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 13:44:48 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote, in us.military.army:

"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

:What would _you_ consider a "fair trial", Fred, and would your opinion
:change if you were the defendant?

Paul, nobody wants a 'fair trial' when they're the defendant. They
just want to get off.

Sometimes 'getting off' IS a fair trial. :-)

This lot will get fairer trials than they've got coming. Why is it
none of your lot are willing to wait for the bad outcomes you keep
shrilling about to occur before tearing your hair out and wailing to
the skies?

Because, by that time, it may be too late. Under international law,
every accused person is entitled to be treated humanely, to be
properly advised of any charges against them, to be properly
advised of their right to defend themselves. Holding people at
Guantanamo doesn't excuse the US from obeying international
law. We get away with it only because we're the most powerful
nation on earth and no one dares to challenge us.

Hell, wait until the first trial happens and someone gets sentenced.
Then you MIGHT have something to complain about. However, I'd bet you
won't. The military, unlike a civilian court, is going to be pretty
scrupulous about things before they'll sentence someone to death.

My understanding is that there will be no appeals, or at best,
limited appeals. So if, by chance, something -does- go wrong,
all avenues of redress will be closed. I don't call that a 'fair'
anything.

You might want to look at just when the last time was that a military
court handed down a death penalty.

Irrelevant to the question at hand. Regardless of the outcome,
all trials must be fair if justice is to be served.

It would have been better, IMO, if we had asked the UN to
set up an international tribunal to deal with the situation.
But we did not, so we are stuck with the decision made
by our government to do everything in secret behind
closed doors. No offense intended to the US military
justice system, but I think it was a bad call.

YMMV.

Henrietta K. Thomas
Chicago, Illinois

Under international law,
every accused person is entitled to be treated humanely, to be
properly advised of any charges against them,

Thread got long so I'm not sure who wrote this but.................
They are not "accused person's" they were caught on the battlefield
shooting at allied troops or supporting those who were. So let 'em
sit till the war is over and then decide what to do with em.
kwc

chebs wrote:


Under international law,
every accused person is entitled to be treated humanely, to be
properly advised of any charges against them,

Thread got long so I'm not sure who wrote this but.................
They are not "accused person's" they were caught on the battlefield
shooting at allied troops or supporting those who were. So let 'em
sit till the war is over and then decide what to do with em. kwc

Not all of them, one of the two british born prisoners was extradited
from Pakistan to Afghanistan and then went from there to Guantanamo.

Another was extradited from Zambia.

Henrietta K Thomas wrote in message . ..
(newsgroups trimmed way down)

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 13:44:48 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote, in us.military.army:

"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

:What would _you_ consider a "fair trial", Fred, and would your opinion
:change if you were the defendant?

Paul, nobody wants a 'fair trial' when they're the defendant. They
just want to get off.

Sometimes 'getting off' IS a fair trial. :-)

This lot will get fairer trials than they've got coming. Why is it
none of your lot are willing to wait for the bad outcomes you keep
shrilling about to occur before tearing your hair out and wailing to
the skies?

Because, by that time, it may be too late. Under international law,
every accused person is entitled to be treated humanely, to be
properly advised of any charges against them, to be properly
advised of their right to defend themselves. Holding people at
Guantanamo doesn't excuse the US from obeying international
law. We get away with it only because we're the most powerful
nation on earth and no one dares to challenge us.

Hell, wait until the first trial happens and someone gets sentenced.
Then you MIGHT have something to complain about. However, I'd bet you
won't. The military, unlike a civilian court, is going to be pretty
scrupulous about things before they'll sentence someone to death.

My understanding is that there will be no appeals, or at best,
limited appeals. So if, by chance, something -does- go wrong,
all avenues of redress will be closed. I don't call that a 'fair'
anything.

You might want to look at just when the last time was that a military
court handed down a death penalty.

Irrelevant to the question at hand. Regardless of the outcome,
all trials must be fair if justice is to be served.

It would have been better, IMO, if we had asked the UN to
set up an international tribunal to deal with the situation.
But we did not, so we are stuck with the decision made
by our government to do everything in secret behind
closed doors. No offense intended to the US military
justice system, but I think it was a bad call.


Actually the trick is to use the threat of the kangaroo courts to
force guilty pleas

from Today' washington post


LACKAWANNA, N.Y. -- Even now, after the arrests and the anger and the
world media spotlight, the mystery for neighbors in this old steel
town remains this: Why would six of their young men so readily agree
to plead guilty to terror charges, accepting long prison terms far
from home?......

But defense attorneys say the answer is straightforward: The federal
government implicitly threatened to toss the defendants into a secret
military prison without trial, where they could languish indefinitely
without access to courts or lawyers.That prospect terrified the men.
They accepted prison terms of 61/2 to 9 years.

"We had to worry about the defendants being whisked out of the
courtroom and declared enemy combatants if the case started going well
for us," said attorney Patrick J. Brown, who defended one of the
accused. "So we just ran up the white flag and folded. Most of us wish
we'd never been associated with this case.".....

Future defendants in terror cases could face the same choice: Plead
guilty or face the possibility of indefinite imprisonment or even the
death penalty. That troubles defense attorneys and some legal
scholars, not least because prosecutors never offered evidence that
the Lackawanna defendants intended to commit an act of terrorism.....

"The defendants believed that if they didn't plead guilty, they'd end
up in a black hole forever," said Neal R. Sonnett, chairman of the
American Bar Association's Task Force on Treatment of Enemy
Combatants. "There's little difference between beating someone over
the head and making a threat like that."

Several of Buffalo's better-known defense attorneys signed on to
represent the Lackawanna Six. The lawyers didn't view their clients as
innocent but planned to poke enough holes in the prosecution case to
draw a better deal. They found that allegations that their clients
spent large sums of money arose from a casino credit card jointly held
by an extended family. And there was no evidence that the men had
spoken of or planned an attack."We'd been able to convince the press
and the public that there wasn't all that much evidence," said John J.
Molloy, who represented al-Bakri. "We had enough to make the
government work for its pound of flesh."

But they did not reckon on the new legal world. The defense lawyers
asked to question .....al-Dosari, in hopes of proving their clients
had been duped into traveling to Afghanistan. .....Al-Dosari is widely
reported to be held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But the Justice Department does not acknowledge that. "Juma?" U.S.
Attorney Battle asked last week. "I don't know anyone named Juma."

Battle said defense lawyers came to realize two facts of life.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft would not hesitate to veto any
deals. And the Defense Department stood ready to ask Bush to designate
the defendants as enemy combatants.....

comment

This is just another example of how the adminstration is willing to
throw away hundreds of years of development of law and civilization.
Winning will be meaningless if we push the world back into barbarism.

Vince

Ya know that post-ww2 at the war crimes trials for the Nazi elite, the
prisoners there
got more freedoms and rights afforded to them than the folks at Guantanamo
have. Pretty
bad when the allies treated nazi's better than the USA treats
'non-combatants'. Canada's
external affairs department STILL hasn't been told the identities of the
canadians being held
their, nor allowed to see them/speak with them. Britain only recently was
allowed to contact
their citizens being held there.

Henrietta K Thomas wrote:

(newsgroups trimmed way down)

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 13:44:48 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote, in us.military.army:

"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

:What would _you_ consider a "fair trial", Fred, and would your opinion
:change if you were the defendant?

Paul, nobody wants a 'fair trial' when they're the defendant. They
just want to get off.

Sometimes 'getting off' IS a fair trial. :-)

This lot will get fairer trials than they've got coming. Why is it
none of your lot are willing to wait for the bad outcomes you keep
shrilling about to occur before tearing your hair out and wailing to
the skies?

Because, by that time, it may be too late. Under international law,
every accused person is entitled to be treated humanely, to be
properly advised of any charges against them, to be properly
advised of their right to defend themselves. Holding people at
Guantanamo doesn't excuse the US from obeying international
law. We get away with it only because we're the most powerful
nation on earth and no one dares to challenge us.

Hell, wait until the first trial happens and someone gets sentenced.
Then you MIGHT have something to complain about. However, I'd bet you
won't. The military, unlike a civilian court, is going to be pretty
scrupulous about things before they'll sentence someone to death.

My understanding is that there will be no appeals, or at best,
limited appeals. So if, by chance, something -does- go wrong,
all avenues of redress will be closed. I don't call that a 'fair'
anything.

You might want to look at just when the last time was that a military
court handed down a death penalty.

Irrelevant to the question at hand. Regardless of the outcome,
all trials must be fair if justice is to be served.

It would have been better, IMO, if we had asked the UN to
set up an international tribunal to deal with the situation.
But we did not, so we are stuck with the decision made
by our government to do everything in secret behind
closed doors. No offense intended to the US military
justice system, but I think it was a bad call.

YMMV.

Henrietta K. Thomas
Chicago, Illinois

Kristan Roberge wrote:

:Ya know that post-ww2 at the war crimes trials for the Nazi elite, the prisoners there
:got more freedoms and rights afforded to them than the folks at Guantanamo have. Pretty
:bad when the allies treated nazi's better than the USA treats 'non-combatants'.

What 'non-combatants'? You know, your arguments would be a lot more
convincing if you could only get the basic facts right.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn