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US dismissed legal team for detainees, former lawyer says

A team of military lawyers recruited to defend alleged terrorists held by the US at Guantanamo Bay was dismissed by the Pentagon after some of its members rebelled against the unfair way the trials have been designed, a former military lawyer says.

And some members of the new legal defense team remain deeply unhappy with the trials -- known as "military commissions" -- believing them to be slanted toward the prosecution and an affront to modern US military justice.

Of the more than 600 detainees at the US prison camp at Guantanamo, none has been charged with any crime, and none has had access to a lawyer, although some have been in captivity of one kind or another for two years.

But the US has promised that at least some of the prisoners will be charged and tried by military commissions, an arcane form of tribunal based on long-disused models from the 1940s.

A former military lawyer with good contacts in the US military legal establishment said that the first group of defense lawyers the Pentagon recruited for Guantanamo balked at the commission rules, which insist that the government be allowed to listen in to any conversations between attorney and client.

"There was a circular that went out to military lawyers in the early spring of 2003 which said `we are looking for volunteers' for defense counsel," said the ex-military lawyer. "There was a selection process, and the people they selected were the right people ... they were good lawyers.

"The first day, when they were being briefed on the dos and don'ts, at least a couple said: `You can't impose these restrictions on us because we can't properly represent our clients,'" the former lawyer said.

"When the group decided they weren't going to go along, they were relieved. They reported in the morning and got fired that afternoon."

The Pentagon's recently set up Office of Military Commissions denied the claim.
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