Military Tribunals Resume at Guantanamo Despite Pending Supreme Court Case on Legality

We turn to the U.S. military prison at the Guantanamo Bay where a Canadian teenager and nine other detainees are appearing before a military tribunal this week even though the legality of the pre-trial hearings remains in doubt. Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that will decide whether the government can legally use military commissions to try detainees.

Although the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the case, the military is going ahead with the pre-trial hearings.

One of the detainees appearing before the tribunal today is the Canadian-born Omar Khadr. U.S. forces detained him four years ago in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old.

Human rights lawyers say Omar is the first person in modern world history to face a military commission for alleged crimes committed as a child. He is accused of killing U.S. special forces soldier Christopher Speer with a grenade during a firefight near the village of Khost, Afghanistan in July 2002.

Earlier this week Khadr's attorney challenged the fairness of the proceedings. Over the past few months the attorney, U.S. Marine Lt. Col Colby Vokey, has only been allowed to talk to his client for two hours and he has been unable to see all of the evidence against the teenager. Khadr's legal team is expected to file a motion to halt the tribunal proceedings, arguing that the hearing's presiding officer does not have the power to put the Canadian on trial.

Similar complaints have been expressed by other attorneys representing detainees before the military tribunal.

* Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. In January, he traveled to Guantanamo Bay to observe some of the proceedings before the military tribunals. He has also been closely monitoring the Supreme Court case Hamdam v. Rumsfeld and authored a friend of the court brief in the case.

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ACLU blog on Guantanamo tribunals
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