Guantanamo Judge: "I Don't Care About International Law"

Little information about those held at Guantanamo has been released through official government channels. But stories of 60 or more are spelled out in detail in thousands of pages of transcripts filed in US District Court in Washington. The detainees appeared last year before military tribunals which, after quick reviews, confirmed their status as ‘‘enemy combatants” who could be held indefinitely. In one remarkable case a judge informed a detainee, “I don’t care about international law. I don’t want to hear the words ‘international law’ again. We are not concerned with international law.” But not to worry; a spokeswoman for the Defense Department assures us that, “the tribunal process gave each detainee a fair opportunity to contest their detention.”

WASHINGTON — A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay asked his US military judge a pointed question: ‘‘Is it possible to see the evidence in order to refute it?” In another case, according to court documents, a judge blurted out: ‘‘I don’t care about international law.”

The government is holding about 550 terror suspects at the US Navy base in Cuba. An additional 214 have been released since the facility opened in January 2002 — some into the custody of their home governments, others freed outright.

Little information about those held at Guantanamo has been released through official government channels. But stories of 60 or more are spelled out in detail in thousands of pages of transcripts filed in US District Court in Washington, where lawsuits challenging their detentions have been filed. The previously anonymous detainees provide accounts of their imprisonment and impressions of US justice. Some express defiance, others stoic acceptance of their fate.

The detainees appeared last year before military tribunals which, after quick reviews, confirmed their status as ‘‘enemy combatants” who could be held indefinitely.

Omar Rajab Amin, a Kuwaiti who graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1992, wanted to see the evidence. The ‘‘tribunal president,” the de facto judge…

Posted by Gregoire
I was born in NYC, raised in Palo Alto CA, attended university at UC Santa Cruz. I spent the better part of a decade traveling in Asia and working in restaurants before entering graduate school in Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at UVA in Charlottesville VA,...