Military judges in a Guantanamo war crimes court were pressing forward yesterday with hearings against five men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US and a Canadian accused of killing a US soldier.
Several days of pretrial motions were scheduled to start a day before the inauguration of US president-elect Barack Obama, who has said he would close the offshore prison at the US Navy base in Cuba.
Lawyers and representatives of human rights groups who have come to observe the hearings believe Obama will suspend the military commission system created by Congress and outgoing US President George W. Bush in 2006 to prosecute dozens of men held at Guantanamo.
PHOTO: AFP
Many observers doubt the US will go ahead with the Jan. 26 trial of Canadian Omar Khadr, who is accused of killing a US soldier with a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002, when the Toronto native was 15.
“This system is discredited and flawed and should not exist one day more, and certainly the signals that we hear from Washington, from the Obama transition team, are that he will act on it as soon as he is in office,” said Jamil Dakwar, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who is in Guantanamo this week to observe the hearings.
Obama’s nominee for attorney-general, Eric Holder, in his confirmation hearing echoed a major criticism of the commissions: that they lack sufficient legal protections for those charged. He said the detainees could be tried in the US.
Those statements make it unlikely that the commission system will go forward, said Navy Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler, Khadr’s Pentagon-appointed lawyer.
“It is simply unimaginable to think that these proceedings would continue when you have an administration that is on the record saying that so clearly,” Kuebler said. “What’s very clear ... is that they want to take a different course of action on Guantanamo.”
The Pentagon’s chief war crimes prosecutor, Army Colonel Lawrence Morris, said he did not know what the Obama administration would do and had to plan as if the commissions would go forward. Still, prosecutors joined with the defense in asking military judges to postpone this week’s hearings until after the inauguration. The judges rejected the request.
In the Sept. 11 trial, a key issue before the court is whether Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who is accused of being a key lieutenant to the alleged architect of the plot, is mentally competent to adequately participate in his defense.
His military-appointed lawyers argue they need more information, including testimony from guards and medical personnel who have interacted with him at Guantanamo, to help them determine if he is mentally fit to stand trial.
Before the court can delve into that issue, however, the judge will consider whether the Pentagon must charge and arraign the men all over again after it withdrew and refiled charges in about 20 cases. The Pentagon described the refiling as a procedural step required to appoint new military jury panel members.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS