World-News

CounterPunch
by Andy Worthington

05/18/08

Anyone who has kept half an eye on the proceedings at the Military Commissions in Guantanamo — the unique system of trials for ‘terror suspects’ that was conceived in the wake of the 9/11 attacks by Vice President Dick Cheney and his close advisers — will be aware that their progress has been faltering at best. After six and a half years, in which they have been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, derailed by their own military judges, relentlessly savaged by their own military defense lawyers, and condemned as politically motivated by their own former chief prosecutor, they have only secured one contentious result: a plea bargain negotiated by the Australian David Hicks, who admitted to providing ‘material support for terrorism,’ and dropped his well-chronicled claims of torture and abuse by US forces, in order to secure his return to Australia to serve out the remainder of a meager nine-month sentence last March...

http://counterpunch.org/worthington05172008.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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