Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Military Tribunal Returns Verdict

Filed under: Law | Terrorism — by Will Kirkland @ 7:02 am
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“A panel of six military officers convicted a former driver for Osama bin Laden of a war crime Tuesday, completing the first military commission trial here and the first conducted by the United States since the end of World War II.

lawyers for Mr. Hamdan have been saying here this week that a conviction would certainly bring appeals, perhaps back to the Supreme Court, to deal with claims that the tribunals here do not meet American standards of fundamental fairness. “History and world opinion, will judge whether the government proved the system to be fair,” the defense said in a statement.

After closing arguments Monday, Charles D. Swift, a former Navy lawyer who has represented Mr. Hamdan for years, said the two week proceeding here had been a trial that did not follow the American rule of law and that the defense believed American courts would eventually correct the legal errors here. Mr. Swift, called the military commission “a made up tribunal to try anybody we don’t like.”

Hamdan Found Guilty of One Charge, Acquitted of Another

The gang that likes blowing things up creates a Military Tribunal system and finds a chauffeur guilty on one charge — after seven years. Are we feeling safer now?

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Words for Acts

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Tom Paine

---"Dissertations on First Principles of Government," 1795



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