Secret Afghani Trials For Detainees

The New York Times this morning is reporting that Afghanistan is holding secret trials for dozens of Afghan men who were formerly detained by the US in Gitmo and Baghram:

Dozens of Afghan men who were previously held by the United States at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are now being tried [in Afghanistan] in secretive Afghan criminal proceedings based mainly on allegations forwarded by the American military.

The prisoners are being convicted and sentenced to as much as 20 years’ confinement in trials that typically run between half an hour and an hour, said human rights investigators who have observed them. One early trial was reported to have lasted barely 10 minutes, an investigator said. /snip

Witnesses do not appear in court and cannot be cross-examined. There are no sworn statements of their testimony.

Instead, the trials appear to be based almost entirely on terse summaries of allegations that are forwarded to the Afghan authorities by the United States military. Afghan security agents add what evidence they can, but the cases generally center on events that sometimes occurred years ago in war zones that the authorities may now be unable to reach.

“These are no-witness paper trials that deny the defendants a fundamental fair-trial right to challenge the evidence and mount a defense,” said Sahr MuhammedAlly, a lawyer for the advocacy group Human Rights First who has studied the proceedings. “So any convictions you get are fundamentally flawed.”

According to the Times, since 2002 the Bush administration has been trying to get various countries to prosecute Gitmo prisoners as part of their "repatriation." Britain and other countries have refused because they say that US evidence won't hold up in their courts. But not Afghanistan:

the Afghan authorities have now tried 82 of the former prisoners since last October and referred more than 120 other cases for prosecution.

Of the prisoners who have been through the makeshift Afghan court, 65 have been convicted and 17 acquitted, according to a report on the prosecutions by Human Rights First that is to be made public on Thursday.

What does the US government say about these remarkable, civilized, reliable, fair trials? Please refrain from scoffing:

United States officials defended their role in providing information [and the defendants] for the Afghan trials as a legitimate way to try to contain the threats that some of the more dangerous detainees would pose if they were released outright.

“These are not prosecutions that are being done at the request or behest of the United States government,” said Sandra L. Hodgkinson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detention policy. “These are prosecutions that are being done by Afghans for crimes committed on their territory by their nationals.”

Ms. Hodgkinson said the United States had pressed the Afghan authorities “to conduct the trials in a fair manner,” and had insisted that lawyers be provided for the prisoners after the first 10 of them were convicted without legal representation. But she did not directly reject the criticisms raised in the Human Rights First report, adding, “These trials are much more consistent with the traditional Afghan justice process than they are with ours.”

Let us briefly review the trial options for Afghani prisoners in Gitmo: indefinite detention without trial and without habeas review by the US courts (depending on pending US Supreme Court decisions) and possibly with interrogations torture, OR possibly torture and then a show trial by a US military commission without confrontation of witnesses, possibly resulting in a death sentence, OR possibly torture followed by a second, illegal extradition to Afghanistan and a "trial" without a record or review that results in decades of confinement in an Afghani prison. Spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam.

Pardon me for being overly fastidious about the trial rights of the accused, but that's an extremely disgraceful, embarrassing list of options.

Where In The World Is Diego Garcia?

A Map

Today UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband apologized to parliament. He admitted that US "special rendition" illegal extradition flights had landed on British soil despite earlier assurances that they hadn't.

Miliband said that on two occasions in 2002 US flights carrying "terrorist suspects" stopped to refuel at the airbase on the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia. Diego Garcia? You've got to be kidding. Look at the map. Why in heaven's name would a flight between any two points ever stop in Diego Garcia? Were the people being transported from or to Indonesia? Unfortunately, you cannot be told that, even though the flights were 6 years ago, if you were told, you'd have to be silenced.

The balance of the story from The Independent:

He said his concern about the case was shared by US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

"We both agree that the mistakes made in these two cases are not acceptable and she shares my deep regret that this information has only just come to light," he said.

Mr Miliband told MPs that he was "very sorry indeed" to have to correct previous statements made by then prime minister Tony Blair and foreign secretary Jack Straw that rendition flights had not used British bases.

In other words, the previous statements by Blair and Straw and Rice and heaven knows who else were false. Regardless, the details about the two admitted flights are extremely limited:

Mr Miliband said that in each of the two cases, the aircraft involved had been carrying a single detainee - neither of them British - who did not leave the plane while it was on the ground at Diego Garcia.

One of those detainees has since been released but the other is still being held by the Americans at Guantanamo Bay.

Mr Miliband said the Americans had given an assurance that no detainees had been held on Diego Garcia and that US records showed no record of any other rendition through Diego Garcia or any other UK territory.

Oh thank heavens that the two souls being illegally extradcited or kidnapped weren't British. That makes this so much more palatable. Not.

Of course, the US version of the story is more detailed. It seems that CIA Director Michael Hayden told agency employees that information previously provided to the British "turned out to be wrong." Hayden told AP AP:

One of the two prisoners is now jailed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and the other was released to his home country, where he has since been freed by that government, the U.S. intelligence official said.

The CIA didn't interrogate or imprison either man, according to the official. In this case, the CIA only moved the two men from one country to another.

The CIA has held and interrogated fewer than 100 prisoners in its detention program, using "enhanced" or harsh interrogation techniques on about a third of them, Hayden has told Congress.

The rendition program secretly transfers alleged terrorists from one country to another without formal extradition proceedings. It can involve moving prisoners to the custody of governments where harsh interrogation techniques, including torture, are known to be used. The U.S. government insists it does not move prisoners to third countries without assurances that torture will not be used.

Does this make sense to anyone? In fact, it raises more questions than it answers.

* The CIA allegedly didn't imprison either of the two people who were flown through Diego Garcia. They obviously were not free to leave the plane. Is keeping someone on a plane traveling between two countries who wish to or have imprisoned the person being transported something other than "imprisonment?"

* Is the CIA now some kind of secure, worldwide prison taxi service carrying prisoners from one country to another? How is it that the CIA has that particular job? And between what countries does the US ferry prisoners? Does the CIA direct or participate in deciding where prisoners should be imprisoned?

* What are the admitted "harsh interrogation techniques" in the sending and/or recipient countries and what standard is being used, if any, to determine that they do not amount to "torture?" Or put another way, when the US receives an assurance that "torture will not be used" what is the definition of torture?

* Why are third party countries and not the US imprisoning and using "harsh interrogation techniques" on these prisoners?

May we have answers to these questions? Of course not. If we were told the answers we'd imperil the safety of the free world. We'd give the terrists information we don't want them to have. We'd be aiding the enemy. We'd be thwarting the GWOT^TM. How very silly of you to ask. Did you think this was the US and that the Government would answer these questions? How very silly of you.