US President Barack Obama has revived Bush-era military tribunals for top Guantanamo Bay terror suspects that he once branded a “failure,” but proposed new rules on evidence and detainee rights.
Rights campaigners reacted angrily, warning the move would prolong the “injustice” of the “war on terror” camp, days after Obama dismayed some backers by opposing the release of photos of Iraq and Afghan prison abuse.
“This is the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values,” Obama said in a written statement on Friday, outlining his reasoning and a set of reforms to the military commissions.
“These reforms will begin to restore the commissions as a legitimate forum for prosecution, while bringing them in line with the rule of law,” Obama said.
Obama halted the Guantanamo tribunals pending a review after taking office in January, saying the system did not work, but did not rule out the use of a modified system in future.
Last year, however, Obama had called the military commissions “an enormous failure.”
The president said the Department of Defense would ask for extension of the suspension of military commissions to permit time for reforms.
Commissions were “appropriate for trying enemies who violate the laws of war, provided that they are properly structured and administered,” Obama said.
David Rivkin, a Washington lawyer who served in the administration of US president Ronald Reagan, told the New York Times the decision suggested that the Obama White House was coming to accept the George W. Bush administration’s thesis that terror suspects should be viewed as enemy fighters.
“I give them great credit for coming to their senses after looking at the dossiers,” Rivkin told the paper. However, several key amendments will be made to the commissions system.
Statements using CIA interrogation methods that are “cruel, inhumane and degrading” — since outlawed by Obama — will no longer be admitted as evidence.
The party that offers hearsay evidence must now prove its reliability. In Bush-era trials, the burden rested on the party that objected to it.
Furthermore, the accused will get greater latitude to choose his defense counsel and more protection if he refuses testify.
Military commission judges will now also be allowed to establish the jurisdiction of their own courts.
But the changes did not appease rights groups.
“The military commissions system is flawed beyond repair,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
“By resurrecting this failed Bush administration idea, President Obama is backtracking dangerously on his reform agenda,” he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) bemoaned a “striking blow to due process and the rule of law.”
“President Obama would do well to remember his own infamous words during his presidential campaign: ‘You can’t put lipstick on a pig,’” ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said..
Despite the improvements, the commissions “do not address fundamental concerns about the flawed nature of such tribunals,” Human Rights Watch said.
“The very purpose of the commissions was to permit trials that lacked the full due process protections available to defendants in federal courts,” it said.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs denied the president was retooling a discredited Bush-era system.
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