Col. Davis also contends that the Hamdan incident was not the first time political pressures were applied to the Guantanamo trials process. He said that in March 2007 that senior officials pushed for a plea bargain for Guantanamo detainee David Hicks, dubbed the “Australian Taliban.” The plea allowed him to serve a nine-month sentence in his homeland for aiding the Taliban. Davis said the sentence was orchestrated to help Conservative Party Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, who sanding for reelection and was under domestic criticism for his support of U.S. policies. Hicks was recently released from an Australian prison. Howard lost his reelection bid.
Hamdan became part of U.S. judicial history when the Supreme Court found in his favor in 2006 that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay lack "the power to proceed because its structures and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949." Specifically, the ruling said Common Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention was violated.
The case considered whether the U.S. Congress may pass legislation preventing the Supreme Court from hearing the case of an accused combatant before his military commission takes place, whether the special military commissions that had been set up violated federal law (including the Uniform Code of Military Justice and treaty obligations), and whether courts can enforce the articles of the 1949 Geneva Convention.
The court’s decision was a stunning rebuke to the Bush Administration. It led to Congress’ hurried enactment of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, which set up new procedures and structures for bringing Guantanamo detainees to trial, and limited detainees’ access to habeas corpus. The MCA still faces court challenges as being unconstitutional.
The U.S. Government has called for the death penalty for the six “high value detainees,” who were transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, where they were reportedly subjected to harsh interrogations. Those charged include Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an alleged former senior aide to Osama bin Laden, who is said to have admitted to being the principal planner of the plot.
The U.S. currently holds about 275 men at Guantanamo and says it plans to prosecute approximately 80 before military commissions.
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