ACLU: Obama’s revival of tribunals strikes blow to rule of law

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09/05/16/aclu-obamas-revival-of-tribunals-strikes-blow-to-rule-of-law/

5/16/2009

Human rights groups reacted with anger and disappointment Friday to President Barack Obama’s revival of special military trials of terror suspects, saying the system was flawed beyond repair.

In announcing the return of the military commission system devised by former president George W. Bush, Obama also proposed reforms that he said would restore them “as a legitimate forum for prosecution, while bringing them in line with the rule of law.”

But human rights organizations almost in unison called it a bad idea, insisting that even with changes the special military tribunals would provide substandard justice and meet with delays and legal challenges.

“The military commissions system is flawed beyond repair,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “By resurrecting this failed Bush administration idea, President Obama is backtracking dangerously on his reform agenda.”

The American Civil Liberties Union called it “a striking blow to due process and the rule of law.”

“Tweaking the rules of these failed tribunals so that they provide ‘more due process’ is absurd,” said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero. “There is no such thing as ‘-due process light.’”

“In this case, President Obama would do well to remember his own infamous words during his presidential campaign: you can’t put lipstick on a pig,” he said.

Under the changes proposed by Obama, the use of evidence obtained through “cruel, inhumane and degrading” interrogation methods would no longer be admitted as evidence.

Hearsay would be allowed but the party offering it must now prove its reliability, rather than the party that objected to it.

The accused also would also have greater latitude in choosing a defense attorney and would enjoy greater protections if they refused to testify.

“Although the proposed changes to the commissions would be improvements, they do not address fundamental concerns about the flawed nature of such tribunals,” Human Rights Watch said.

“The very purpose of the commissions was to permit trials that lacked the full due process protections available to defendants in federal courts,” it said.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil rights group active in defending detainees at Guantanamo, said the commissions’ revival was “an alarming development for those who expected that the Obama administration would end Bush administration’s dangerous experiments with our legal system.”

“There is no reason to revive them now on the hope that piecemeal changes could create a legal system at Guantanamo equal to the US criminal justice or courts martial systems,” he said.

Virginia Sloan, president of the Constitution Project, a think tank, said US courts historically had proven their ability to handle the most difficult and sensitive cases.

“President Obama should have demonstrated a return to the rule of law by ending the tainted military commission proceedings,” she said.