US: Hamdan Trial Exposes Flaws in Military Commissions

A trial that depends on handicapping the defense cant possibly be fair, said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. The military judge tried at times to mitigate the commissions most unjust rules, but the flaws in the system won out.  
 
Hamdans case was the first military commission at Guantanamo to proceed to a full trial. Human Rights Watch attended his two-week trial as an observer. From day one, it was marred by irregularities that prevented Hamdan from receiving a fair trial and underscored the problems inherent to the military commissions system.  
 
Human Rights Watch said it was deeply troubling that Hamdans defense team only received hundreds of pages of relevant documents including information about reportedly abusive interrogations just days before the trial began. Other documents trickled in after the trial was under way, making it near impossible for the defense to conduct follow-up investigations.  
 
The military commissions lax hearsay rules permitted government prosecutors to introduce inflammatory and prejudicial material into evidence that had little or no connection to Hamdan. Near the beginning of the trial and over defense objections, the prosecution introduced a graphic video of the death and destruction wrought by al-Qaeda, starting with the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa through the September 11 attacks. Prosecution witnesses later conceded that Hamdan was never involved in planning or executing these or any other attacks.  

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