Guantanamo hearings ‘shams,’ lawyers find

The U.S. military called no witnesses, withheld evidence from detainees and usually reached a decision within a day as it determined that hundreds of men detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were “enemy combatants,” a study to be released today has found.

The analysis of transcripts and records by two lawyers for Guantanamo detainees, aided by more than two dozen law students at Seton Hall University here, found that hearings that determined whether a prisoner should remain in custody gave the accused little opportunity to contest allegations against him.

“These were not hearings. These were shams,” said Mark Denbeaux, an attorney and Seton Hall law professor who along with his son, Joshua, wrote the report.

Their report, based on an analysis of records of military hearings of 393 detainees, comes as the U.S. government seeks to severely restrict detainee access to civilian courts, arguing that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals should be their main legal recourse.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, dismissed the findings as “recycled allegations,” and noted the tribunals gave detainees an opportunity to contest their designation as enemy combatants.

“It is not a criminal trial and is not intended to determine guilt or innocence,” Gordon said. “Rather, it is an administrative process

The military held the tribunals for 558 detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in southeast Cuba between July 2004 and January 2005, and decided that all but 38 were enemy combatants. Handcuffed detainees appeared before a panel of three officers with no defense attorney, only a military “personal representative.”

According to the report, the representatives said nothing in the hearings 14% of the time and made no “substantive” comments 30% of the time. In some cases, the representative appeared to advocate the government’s position, the report said.

The military now holds about 430 men at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to Al Qaeda or the Taliban and holds Administrative Review Boards for them once a year.

The Military Commissions Act, which President Bush signed Oct. 17, strips non-U.S. citizens held under suspicion of being an enemy combatant of their right to challenge their detention in civilian courts with petitions of habeas corpus.