Military tribunals will begin as early as next week to review the status of nearly 600 detainees held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, most whom have been held without charges since their arrest in Afghanistan in late 2001, a senior defense official said yesterday.
Navy Secretary Gordon England yesterday said each tribunal is “not a trial,” but rather “an administrative process” to “look at facts” and assess the status of the detainees from the war on terror. He expects more than 90 percent of detainees to participate.
Mr. England said he hopes that the tribunal system, created early this year after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the legality of the Guantanamo detentions, will allow for 72 hearings weekly. He added that defense officials still are ironing out rules for the tribunals.
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Meanwhile, yesterday, the Pentagon revealed the formation of the Office of Detainee Affairs, whose duties will include receiving independent reports on the treatment of people held by the U.S. military worldwide.
The office is designed to ensure that high-ranking Defense Department officials are notified of abuse reports. Several confidential reports warning of abuses at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq were presented to military officials by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), but never made it up the chain of command.
Photographs emerged in late April of naked and hooded Iraqi prisoners being abused by U.S. soldiers. Multiple congressional hearings on the matter were held in May, and, more recently, the Pentagon has briefed members of Congress about classified ICRC reports.
On Thursday, Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he intends to convene further public hearings about the prisoner abuses.
As for the tribunals, it was not entirely clear yesterday how they relate to the Supreme Court ruling last month to afford the Guantanamo detainees the right to file lawsuits in U.S. federal courts challenging their imprisonment.
Asked whether he felt the system satisfies the Supreme Court ruling, Mr. England said: “Well, I don’t know if it does or not.”
Petitions have been filed in the civilian courts on behalf of as many as 27 of the detainees so far, according to reports yesterday.
The Pentagon will go forward with the separate military tribunals, apparently regardless of the cases being filed in the civilian courts. Military officials have said the tribunals will evaluate the detainees, whom the Bush administration calls “enemy combatants,” to determine whether they should be released.
In recent months, the Pentagon has announced charges against four of the detainees — an Australian, two Yemenis and a Sudanese man. The Pentagon has said it does not plan to seek the death penalty against them.
All four are suspected members of al Qaeda, and two are accused of serving as bodyguards for the terror network’s ringleader, Osama bin Laden.
Among the charges announced against them is conspiracy to commit war crimes, suggesting that the tribunals could be a type of trial to convict the men, a policy not used by the United States since World War II.
However, Mr. England, who spoke with reporters at the Pentagon yesterday, emphasized that each tribunal to be held is “not a trial.”
“This isn’t a trial; this is looking at facts,” he said.
It was not clear the extent to which military officials intend to allow the detainees to defend themselves or whether they will be permitted to call witnesses from their home countries.
Specific details about how the tribunals will be conducted, such as what sentencing guidelines would be followed in the event that a detainee is found guilty apparently still are being finalized.
Mr. England, who maintained that a copy of the procedures for the tribunals would be made public sometime early next week, said all of the detainees at Guantanamo will be assigned a “personal representative.”
“Before the tribunal, the personal representative will give an unclassified statement to the detainee so that the detainee understands, on an unclassified basis, why it is he’s being held as an enemy combatant,” Mr. England said.
Next, he said, the personal representative will work with the detainee to help develop the information that the detainee wishes to bring forward to the tribunal.
“We’ll make sure that that is brought forward,” he said, “with the right interpreters, etc., to make that information available to the tribunal.”
Mr. England stressed that “90 or 95 percent” of detainees responded positively this week when notified that the tribunal process will be moving forward soon.
“Most of the people who received this information listened, read and asked questions,” he said. “About 5 percent of the people responded negatively, that is, crumbled up the notice and threw it on the floor.”
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