IHT headline: "Guantánamo drives prisoners insane"

ya know, sitting here in afghanistan offers a remarkable perspective on what's happening back home... things are bad here, no doubt about it, but when i catch myself thinking about how fortunate we are in the u.s. and then read something like this, it makes me physically ill...

Guantánamo drives prisoners insane, lawyers say

Next month, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was once a driver for Osama bin Laden, could become the first detainee to be tried for war crimes in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. By now, he should be busily working on his defense.

But his lawyers say he cannot. They say Hamdan, already the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day, goes to the bathroom and eats all his meals. His defense team says he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks, talks to himself and says the restrictions of Guantánamo "boil his mind."

"He will shout at us," said his military defense lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer. "He will bang his fists on the table."

His lawyers have asked a military judge to stop his case until Hamdan is placed in less restrictive conditions at Guantánamo, saying he cannot get a fair trial if he cannot focus on defending himself. The judge is to hear arguments as soon as Monday on whether he has the power to consider the claim.

Critics have long asserted that Guantánamo's climate-controlled isolation is a breeding ground for insanity. But turning that into a legal claim marks a new stage for the military commissions at Guantánamo. As military prosecutors push to get trials under way, they are being met with challenges not just to the charges, but to Guantánamo itself.

Conditions are more isolating than many death rows and maximum-security prisons in the United States, said Jules Lobel, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who is an expert on U.S. prison conditions.

Pentagon officials say that Guantánamo holds dangerous men humanely and that there is no unusual quantity of mental illness there. Guantánamo, a military spokeswoman said, does not have solitary confinement, only "single-occupancy cells."

that last line is jaw-droppingly unbelievable for its arrogance if not its outright prevarication...

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In custody six years, first charged three years ago, and only NOW will the "unlawful enemy combatant" question be addressed

this is shameful...

read the first sentence of this article and note your own gut response...

Witnesses are expected to take the stand Thursday for the first time since the U.S. government began trying to prosecute terrorism suspects at Guantánamo.

Prosecutors are expected to present about five witnesses to back their case that Salim Ahmed Hamdan — a former driver for Osama bin Laden — should be charged as an unlawful enemy combatant...

i don't know about you, but i immediately keyed in on the words "first time" and "trying..."

"This will be the first time you will hear about some of the evidence that the government has had and wanted to present," said Army Maj. Bobby Don Gifford, a spokesman for the military commissions.

On Wednesday, a military judge rejected a defense request to talk to the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and two other so-called "high value" detainees to bolster their case that Hamdan was at best a minor al-Qaida figure.

again, "first time..." also illuminating are these choice of words - "has had" and "wanted to..."
so, let's put a bit of context around those words, shall we...?

Hamdan has been in custody nearly six years and was first charged more than three years ago.

puts a little bit different spin on those words, doesn't it...?

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"Congress should ... force the government to cease circumventing legitimate U.S. courts"

i speculated in my earlier post that yesterday's guantánamo decisions could open a window of opportunity to make things right and perhaps lead to the repeal of the heinous military commissions act... i also speculated that military attorneys and judges may well be expressing their resistance to this draconian attempt to subvert the u.s. justice system... it looks like i was right on both counts...

Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, head of the war crimes tribunal defense team, said that Congress should take the opportunity to force the government to cease circumventing legitimate U.S. courts in its effort to prosecute Guantanamo prisoners.

"The military commissions are a model that has repeatedly shown itself incapable of rendering justice," said Sullivan. He added that after the rulings, "if the United States government is wise, this would be the fatal blow to military commissions."

Monday's rulings could provide an opportunity for Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to again propose moving trials to the U.S. mainland. Gates, who told Congress earlier this year that he favors shutting the prison, was traveling in Kyrgyzstan on Monday.

note the specific verbiage...

"circumvent"
"legitimate U.S. courts"
"incapable"
"if the United States government is wise"
"fatal blow"

that these people don't approve of what they're being told to do is crystal clear... shouldn't their concerns be taken very seriously...?

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Salim Ahmed Hamdan case thrown out along with Khadr

to me, this looks like a window of opportunity to force a re-opening, a thorough re-examination, and a repeal of the military commissions act, coupled with a restoration of habeas...

Defense attorneys and legal experts blamed the rush by Congress and
President Bush last year to restore the war-crimes trials after the
U.S. Supreme Court threw out the previous system, declaring it unconstitutional. In a remarkable coincidence, it was Hamdan's lawsuit that wound up in the Supreme Court.

In both of Monday's cases, the judges ruled that the new legislation says only "unlawful enemy combatants" can be tried by the military trials, known as commissions. But Khadr and Hamdan previously had been identified by military panels here only as enemy combatants, lacking the critical "unlawful" designation.

"The fundamental problem is that the law was not carefully written," said Madeline Morris, a Duke University law professor. "It was rushed through in a flurry of political pressure from the White House ... and it is quite riddled with internal contradictions and anomalies."

Prosecuting attorneys in both cases indicated they would appeal the dismissals. But the court designated to hear the appeals — known as the court of military commissions review — doesn't even exist yet, said Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, chief of military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay.

Army Maj. Beth Kubala, spokeswoman for the Office of Military Commissions that organizes the trials, said "the public should make no assumption about the future of military commissions."

She said they will continue to operate openly and fairly and added that dismissals of the charges "reflect that the military judges operate independently."

She declined to comment on how the Office of Military Commissions planned to respond to the setbacks, saying she didn't want to speculate.

what's astounding to me is that the prosecuting attorneys didn't see this coming... even more astounding is that the justice department didn't catch it when the legislation was being drafted, and even more astounding yet is that it wasn't caught in congress... what is says to me is that, under intense pressure from the likes of cheney, addington, and rove, with the clock ticking down to the november elections, everybody was much more interested in kissing bush's ass than doing due diligence... what it also says to me is that there is a fundamental opposition to this process even within the ranks of the military judges, that they would be willing to risk this kind of media bloodbath to make a key legal point...

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