Gitmo's Kafkaesque Kangaroo Courts

Defense counsel objected to the exclusion of their clients during closed pretrial proceedings. The prosecution maintained that defendants must be excluded from hearings in which classified material is discussed.

The Military Commissions Act guarantees the right of the accused to be present at all hearings unless he is disruptive or during deliberations. The defense argued that defendants should be allowed to attend hearings in which classified information is discussed, if the information came from the accused himself.

For example, Mohammad's attorney wants his client to be present when they discuss his torture. The government waterboarded Mohammad 183 times at the CIA black site. Hearings were held from which the accused were excluded.

Learned counsel for Hawsawi filed a motion to prevent the government from force-feeding his client, or in the alternative, to be notified in advance and given an opportunity to be heard before any force-feeding is employed. Hawsawi has been participating in the hunger strike at Guantanamo, but has not yet been force-fed.

His counsel argued that "Mr. Hawsawi has been peacefully protesting by refusing food, on and off, for months now. Given his slender build and already relatively low body weight, it is entirely plausible that forced feeding is imminent." This motion was not argued at the hearings because the judge found it premature, as Hawsawi is not being force-fed yet.

Of the 166 detainees remaining at Guantà ¡namo, 104 are participating in the hunger strike, and 44 are being force-fed. The written procedures refer to force-feeding as "re-feeding." Although they contain a few redactions (material blacked out), the pages that describe the procedure for "re-feeding" are totally redacted.

In 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Commission concluded that the violent force-feeding of detainees at Guantà ¡namo amounted to torture. The Obama administration is also violently force-feeding detainees. The Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment found that "improper coercive involuntary feedings" were being undertaken with "physically forced nasogastric tube feedings of detainees who were completely restrained."

Boston University Professor George Annas, who co-authored a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, characterized the method of force-feeding being used on Democracy NOW!, as a "very violent type of force-feeding." The American Medical Association and the World Medical Association have declared that force-feeding should not be used on a prisoner who is competent to refuse food.

On May 1, 2013, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights wrote to the US government:

"[I]t is unjustifiable to engage in forced feeding of individuals contrary to their informed and voluntary refusal of such a measure. Moreover, hunger strikers should be protected from all forms of coercion, even more so when this is done through force and in some cases through physical violence.

"Health care personnel may not apply undue pressure of any sort on individuals who have opted for the extreme recourse of a hunger strike. Nor is it acceptable to use threats of forced feeding or other types of physical or psychological coercion against individuals who have voluntarily decided to go on a hunger strike."

Four detainees filed a motion in a Washington D.C. federal court on June 30 to stop them from being force-fed and force-medicated with Reglan, a drug that can cause severe neurological disorders. Reprieve brought the motion on behalf of Shaker Aamer, Nabil Hadjarab, Ahmed Belbacha and Abu Wa'el Dhiab, all of whom have been cleared for release from Guantanamo.

Trials in these cases will not begin before 2015. President Obama should halt all military commission proceedings and announce that the trials will be held in federal civilian courts, which have shown they are more than capable of prosecuting terrorism cases.

As demonstrated in both this piece and  the one I wrote about al Nashiri's pretrial hearings, justice is impossible to achieve in military commissions, where guilt is a foregone conclusion.