Today's dispatch from Guantanamo- ACLU's observer, Romero

[Rose Siding]

http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=16279&c=207

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...We also learned a great deal more about the Combatant Status Review tribunals. Thirty-one tribunals have been completed thus far. Nineteen of the accused have decided to participate, whereas 12 refused to participate. Twenty-three determinations have been sent to Washington, D.C. for review, of which 14 have been validated as “enemy combatants.” Of the 14, only one witness has appeared in these tribunals and none of the 14 have yet been informed of the validation of their designation as enemy combatants.

For the accused who do participate, the proceeding normally takes under two hours: one hour for the unclassified portion and one hour for the classified portion. For those who do not choose to participate, the entire Combatant Status Review takes approximately one hour. There are 585 men held here in Guantanamo and there are 177 open Combatant Status Review tribunals.

Two themes have come out of this first day of briefings. One is the ambivalence that the military has toward NGO participants and even the broader media. They want to give us access, but not too much access. They want to be transparent, but the transparency can’t go too far. For instance, tomorrow, members of the media will travel to Camp Delta, but unfortunately the NGO participants were told that we cannot attend that tour, even though we have been given full security clearance to sit in the commission room on Tuesday.

The second theme is that there is a great desire to show how the commissions and the tribunals are fair and just, and how they mirror the American system of justice. But yet, when you compare the rules for both the commissions and the tribunals, you find serious departures from either military justice proceedings or regular criminal proceedings. For instance, under the Combatant Status Review tribunals, which are “administrative” we were told, each detainee is assigned a personal representative who is not a legal representative and whose conversations with the detainee are not confidential in any way. In fact, this personal representative is able to provide both exculpatory and inculpatory evidence that he gleans in his “personal representation” of the detainee.

How this all plays out, I hope to be able to tell you more in coming days. As I said to one of the reporters today, this isn’t about the guys in the orange jumpsuits, this is about us. This is about what rules and values will guide an American system of justice that we can hold up to Americans and to the entire world. So far, I have no comfort to give on that front and I doubt that much will change by the end of the week.

I’ll keep you posted and talk to you tomorrow. Please send suggestions for what you’d like me to report on in coming days at [e-mail]. Let me know what’s on your mind.

Anthony D. Romero,
ACLU Executive Director