Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees could
challenge their detention in U.S. courts.
The unclassified portions of the court documents are very revealing:
A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay asked his U.S. military judge a pointed question: "Is it possible to see the evidence in order to refute it?" In another case, a judge blurted out: "I don't care about international law."
Court documents reviewed by The Associated Press are giving dozens of Guantanamo detainees what the Bush administration had sought to keep from public view: identities and voices.
The government is holding about 550 terrorist suspects at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. An additional 214 have been released since the facility opened in January 2002 - some into the custody of their home governments, others freed outright.
Little information about those held at Guantanamo has been released through official government channels. But stories of 60 or more are spelled out in detail in thousands of pages of transcripts filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, where lawsuits challenging their detentions have been filed.
The previously anonymous detainees provide accounts of their imprisonment and impressions of U.S. justice. Some express defiance, others stoic acceptance of their fate.
There's more below the fold.
The article gives an example of an exchange between a "tribunal president" (judge) and a detainee:
"You are not the master of the Earth, Sir," Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman, told a tribunal president.
Feroz Ali Abbasi was ejected from his September hearing because he repeatedly challenged the legality of his detention.
"I have the right to speak," Abbasi said.
"No you don't," the tribunal president replied.
"I don't care about international law," the tribunal president told Abbasi just before he was taken from the room. "I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law."
(The bold emphasis is mine.)
"We are not concerned with international law."
That should be the Bush administration's new motto.
Update [2005-4-10 11:7:17 by Plutonium Page]: At the end of the article, there's a link to a list of some of the detainees' court records. Check it out.