You know things are bad when even the prosecutor complains the court is stacked against the defense. That’s how bad it was (is) at Gitmo: Two Prosecutors Faulted Trials for Detainees:
As the Pentagon was making its final preparations to begin war crimes trials against four detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, two senior prosecutors complained in confidential messages last year that the trial system had been secretly arranged to improve the chance of conviction and to deprive defendants of material that could prove their innocence. …
Among the striking statements in the prosecutors’ messages was an assertion by one that the chief prosecutor had told his subordinates that the members of the military commission that would try the first four defendants would be “handpicked” to ensure that all would be convicted.
The same officer, Capt. John Carr of the Air Force, also said in his message that he had been told that any exculpatory evidence – information that could help the detainees mount a defense in their cases – would probably exist only in the 10 percent of documents being withheld by the Central Intelligence Agency for security reasons.
Captain Carr’s e-mail message also said that some evidence that at least one of the four defendants had been brutalized had been lost and that other evidence on the same issue had been withheld.
Note that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts recently ruled that the executive branch could pretty much do what it likes in Gitmo.
Update: is it time to rethink the T-shirt?
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