Published: 02.02.2004
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The tribunals that could decide the fate of
prisoners at Guantanamo Bay violate common principles of U.S. justice as they
are currently proposed, a military-appointed defense lawyer said Sunday.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift said he hopes the tribunal rules are reformed to
ensure fairness in the case of his client, Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen. He said
the legal structure's main problem is that it concentrates authority under the
U.S. president.
"If you put all the powers to prosecute, try and execute a sentence in
one person's hands, that is the absolute antithesis of the checks and balances
in the system of government we have," Swift told The Associated Press during
his first visit to the U.S. base in eastern Cuba.
Hamdan became the second prisoner to meet an attorney when he spoke to the lawyer
through an Arabic interpreter on Saturday. He followed Australian David Hicks,
the only other detainee allowed access to lawyers among some 650 held on suspicion
of links to al-Qaida or Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime.
The two are among six at Guantanamo expected to face tribunals, last used after
the end of World War II. They haven't been formally charged.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether those held at Guantanamo
should be given access to U.S. courts, and a decision is expected later this
year.