US Government Defies Human Rights

The new procedures and rules for the trials of the Guantanamo Bay inmates are clearly there to deny their rights to natural justice.

The new rules will allow hearsay evidence and confessions gained under coercion. Under most "normal" justice systems, including both the civilian and military justice systems in the United States, exclude both these types of evidence because they are considered unreliable.

Under the new rules prosecutors will have access to classified information but the defence won't. But a fair trial requires that both sides have access to all the available information.

It is a crazy situation that the US which prides itself on defending freedom is denying the very freedoms that the rule of law is meant to guarantee to everyone.

I have a theory that this is just a ploy by the Government to prolong the detention by Guantanamo inmates. It seems very obvious to me that they are expecting the defendants to again appeal to the Supreme Court against the unfairness of the system. This will take over a year to hear and then another year to come up with another unfair set of rules which will again go to the Supreme Court. They will be able to hold these people in an indefinite detention regime while all the time claiming to be upholding the rule of law.

I'm not an apologist for terrorism. But the way to win the so-called "war on terror" is through justice and honesty not through cynical manipulation.