Via ACLU.org

I’ve written a lot about military commissions and why they’re a bad idea. This is from a previous post:

Via my dear friend and superb investigative reporter, Jason Leopold, who is an expert on the matter:

Bruce Fein, a prominent conservative who was a senior official in the Justice Department under President Ronald Reagan, told us, “The entire structure of military commissions is flawed. It combines judge, jury, and prosecutor in the same branch — the very definition of tyranny according to The Federalist Papers.”

He said,” Military Commissions are used to whitewash torture and sister outrages against the Fifth Amendment and due process.”

Other constitutional scholars expressed similar views. [...]

The Military Commission system was set up after the military began sweeping detainees off the battlefields of Afghanistan in late 2001. It has been the subject of repeated legal challenges from human rights organizations because it denied defendants many of the rights they would be granted in a civilian courtroom. When he was a U.S. Senator, Obama voted against the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which established the current system.

In several landmark decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this system, first established by executive order by former President George W. Bush, was unconstitutional.

Military commissions allow hearsay and coerced testimony in as evidence.

So, no, this isn’t a liberal vs. conservative issue, it’s a legal and civil rights one.

With that in mind, there is an op-ed in today’s L.A. Times by Reed Brody, counsel with Human Rights Watch, who concurs. The subheadline reads, “Trying accused terrorists before military commissions won’t meet international standards”:

[Abd al Rahim al Nashiri's] trial before the Guantanamo military commission raises problems that go far beyond the fact that he was tortured. Despite changes made to the commissions since President Obama was elected, they do not meet international fair trial standards. The Defense Department, for instance, handpicks the military judges and juror pool. And there is a massive inequality between the prosecution and the defense in terms of resources.

The rules permit the prosecution to present summaries of classified information, meaning that the accused and his lawyers see only summaries, not the underlying reports, transcripts and other information on which they are based. While similar protection of classified information is available in U.S. civilian courts, the commission rules also allow the introduction of hearsay. These two rules combined allow prosecutors (even unintentionally) to launder evidence obtained from other detainees by torture because they need only present a written summary of the interrogation, not offer the detainee or the interrogator in person, as a witness, or even disclose their identities.

Please read the whole op-ed here.

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All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only *Fayiz al-Kandari’s story here.

Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you’d like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side. You’ll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I’m all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz’s story here, at Answers.com.