Legal News

Pentagon Lawyer Asks Bush to Rescind Charges Against 21 Detainees

By Dan Slater

Jess Bravin, the Journal’s Supreme Court reporter who’s been covering the legal proceedings in Guantanamo, reports:

The Pentagon’s chief Guantanamo defense counsel asked the Bush administration to rescind charges against all 21 detainees facing trial before military commissions.

Earlier this week, Susan Crawford, the Bush administration official in charge of Guantanamo trials told Bob Woodward that she dismissed charges against alleged “20th hijacker” Mohammed al-Qahtani last year because U.S. personnel had tortured him. She added that she would “assume torture” of at least some other detainees, including some of the five she had approved for trial in the 9/11 conspiracy.

Citing those remarks, on Friday the chief defense counsel, Col. Peter Masciola, in a letter, urged Ms. Crawford to rescind charges against all Guantanamo detainees currently awaiting trial by military commission, the Bush administration’s war crimes court that provides defendants fewer rights than do courts-martial or federal courts.

Col. Masciola (pictured) wrote that it’s unclear how many defendants “have also been subjected to ‘torture’ within the legal definition.” He asked that all cases “be withdrawn until this question can be properly answered.”

Doing so would also aid President-elect Barack Obama after he assumes office on Tuesday, Col. Masciola wrote. Mr. Obama has criticized the military commissions and is expected to discontinue the trials in their present form. “The perception of pervasive torture now saddles the incoming Administration and its efforts to set these proceedings on a just course,” he wrote. “Withdrawing the referrals will maximize the new President’s options and permit a far more orderly and consistent treatment” of all defendants.

A spokesman for Ms. Crawford said she would consider the request

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 16, 2009 (boomark / email).