by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
21 November 2009
In the wake of Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement that five Guantánamo prisoners — including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — will face federal court trials in New York, and five others will face trials by Military Commission, much of the media has been consumed with the whining of opportunistic right-wing politicians, who persist in maintaining the same hysterical level of unfounded fearmongering that has skewed the debate on Guantánamo for most of the year.
As a result, far too little attention has been paid to the inadequacy of the Military Commissions as a venue for trying crimes related to terrorism, although there have been some notable exceptions. Both Glenn Greenwald and myself (in an article entitled, “The Logic of the 9/11 Trials, The Madness of the Military Commissions”) have written about it, and Lt. Col. David Frakt, who served as the military defense attorney for the released Afghan prisoner Mohammed Jawad, and for Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, who was convicted in a one-sided show trial last November, delivered a withering analysis of the Commissions’ failings in an email exchange with Marcy Wheeler on Firedoglake, and has also spoken to Truthout about his concerns. In an email to Marcy Wheeler, he explained:
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