Legal News

Are Gitmo?s Military Commissions History?

By Dan Slater

Has Gitmo seen its last war-crimes trial?

On Friday, the Pentagon’s chief Guantanamo defense counsel, Col. Peter Masciola, asked President Bush to rescind charges against all 21 detainees facing trial before military commissions. And yesterday, as Barack Obama was taking the oath of office, Gitmo prosecutors, according to an AP report, said they want to put the war crimes trials on hold while their future remains in doubt. A military judge reportedly adjourned the Gitmo war-crimes trials until today, “unless otherwise ordered.”

The WaPo reports that, in one of its first actions, the Obama administration instructed military prosecutors late yesterday to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving Gitmo detainees. The instruction came in a motion filed with a military court in the case of five defendants accused of organizing the 9/11 attacks. The motion, notes the WaPo called for “a continuance of the proceedings” until May 20 so that “the newly inaugurated president and his administration [can] review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases currently pending before military commissions, specifically.”

Addressing foreign policy in his inaugural address yesterday, Obama said, “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 21, 2009 (boomark / email).