Criticism of Britain's proposed new system aside, our own court system doesn't seem to be handling this mess any better.
Questions cloud terror case (Detroit Free Press, January 31, 2004): The Detroit terrorism case has gone from a major victory in the Bush administration's war on terror to what a federal judge has described as "a fine kettle of fish." In the seven months since three men were convicted in Detroit in the nation's first trial to result from the federal 9/11 investigation, federal prosecutors and FBI agents are being scrutinized for possible misconduct and a federal judge is deciding whether to throw out the convictions.
"I've never seen anything like this," David Moran, a Wayne State University law professor and former state appellate defender, said Friday. "When prosecutors are accused of withholding evidence, the normal response is to circle the wagons and to defend their guys. But that's not happening here." He said the U.S. Attorney's Office is questioning the conduct of its own prosecutors. Moran and other defense lawyers said they wouldn't be surprised if the Justice Department eventually joins defense lawyers' request for a new trial.
The department declined Friday to discuss the situation in Detroit or new disclosures: a claim by a federal informant that FBI agents asked him to break the law to collect evidence against terror suspects and the recall of Detroit FBI chief Willie Hulon to Washington pending a review of his conduct. The disclosures are the latest developments to result from the conviction in June of the three men who had been accused of planning terrorist acts. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft hailed the verdict as a victory against terrorism. Throughout the trial, defense lawyers accused Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino and his boss, Keith Corbett, of withholding documents and witnesses, and of preventing the men from receiving a fair trial. They asked U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen to order a new trial. The prosecutors denied the charges.
At the same time, the spying cases coming out of Guantanamo have been falling apart.
Guantanamo Spy Cases Evaporate (John Mintz, Washington Post, January 25, 2004): Last September, top officials of the Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, told a military judge in Florida that the prison's Muslim chaplain, Army Capt. James Yee, would soon be charged with mutiny, sedition, espionage, spying and aiding the enemy -- crimes that could lead to his execution. Based on those allegations, Yee was held in solitary confinement in a Navy brig in South Carolina for 76 days. But authorities never charged him with any of those offenses. Instead, Yee will face much less serious charges, such as mishandling classified materials and adultery, when the case against him resumes at a hearing at Fort Benning, Ga., scheduled for Feb. 4.
At the same time Yee was being detained, Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad I. Halabi, who worked as an Arabic translator at Guantanamo Bay, was also in solitary confinement 3,000 miles away, held in California on charges of espionage and aiding the enemy. In time, the most serious of those allegations have been withdrawn as well. Some experts on military law and the men's lawyers say the prosecutions of Yee and Halabi have been riddled with inconsistencies and oddities that cast doubt on the government's original fears that a spy ring was operating in the high-security prison for alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. "I find it difficult to believe professional prosecutors are proceeding with these two cases in this manner," said Gary D. Solis, a former Marine Corps prosecutor who teaches the law of war at Georgetown University. "The ineptitude at each step of the proceeding is amazing. . . . It seems there's been investigative overreaction in both cases." Even now, prosecutors have not made final determinations that some of the documents Halabi was charged with possessing were, in fact, classified -- and, if they were, what level of security applied to them. As a result, his lead civilian attorney, Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., said he has only a hazy picture of why his client was arrested last July.
I have to admit, I've always been baffled at the concept that, a year and more after the attacks, a spy ring was operating out of Guantanamo. After all, these people had been in prison for quite some time. What could they possibly have known that was relevant to current operations? And if the translators were smuggling information into the prison, what could the prisoners possibly do with it?
In an unusual episode last month, military investigators raided offices used by Halabi's military lawyers at an Air Force base in California, temporarily seizing one computer and copying its hard drive in a search for evidence against the airman. Rehkopf protested the search in a letter to Air Force officials, calling it "bizarre" and "a conscious disregard of the attorney-client relationship."
Yes, it would be a conscious disregard. It would also be an indication that the case was so desperately weak that they were having to search illegally for confidential information to support it.
(Frankly, this would appear to be nothing more than the rankest and most vile official anti-Muslim conduct. The military has selectively prosecuted Yee for adultery, clearly not because they expect him to serve as a "moral compass" but because they simply don't have anything to charge him with.
Frankly, if the military were truly concerned about having its soldiers serve as "moral compasses", they might do something about the issue of sexual assaults on female GIs by male GIs, a problem which ought to be within their ability to control -- or at least to discipline -- about which they seem to be rather shockingly unconcerned.
But I digress.)
As far as Yee and Halabi are concerned, the government probably ought to simply drop all charges, apologize to the men, and send them back to their units, hoping desperately that the men don't leave. The military has put themselves in a most peculiar situation; on the one hand, they've been desperate for people who can speak and translate Arabic languages, but on the other, the people they do have are subject to high level, visible abuse. Most of the people with the language skills they seek are, perforce, of some Arab ethnicity. Only a true fool would go near the government under these circumstances.
Posted by iain at February 02, 2004 01:32 PM
