Guantánamo files offer glimpse of Pentagon’s kangaroo courts

These documents are posted on the US Defense Department’s web site at: http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt/index.html.

Most of the documents—some 3,959 pages—consist of individual testimonies by detainees before a military tribunal—the Reprocessed Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT)—which is charged with determining whether they are “enemy combatants.” Many of these prisoners were captured by Afghan warlords and police, and then handed over to the US for interrogation and internment. Under the extra-legal rules set by Washington, those whom the tribunal determines are “enemy combatants” can be deprived of all rights and incarcerated indefinitely.

Secondly, there are interviews with more than a thousand detainees before the Administrative Review Board, which decides the fate of the prisoners. Finally, there are hundreds of letters addressed to individual detainees, notifying them of charges against them and concluding that they will have a “meaningful opportunity” to make their case to the aforementioned board.

Significantly, many of these documents contain the names of the prisoners themselves. These documents will no doubt be scoured by thousands of families in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tunisia, Iraq, and elsewhere, whose loved ones are still missing and unaccounted for since the US invasion in 2002.

More
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/guan-m08.shtml