This is what due process means in America: As I write, five men are being tried for plotting the attacks of September 11, 2001. Though one would expect that such proceedings might be dubbed “the trial of the century” and attract commensurate attention, it is quite possible—likely, even—that you have not even heard of them. The five defendants accused of killing nearly three thousand Americans are being tried before a military commission at Guantánamo Bay. Those handful of visitors who are able to gain permission to attend, including a very few journalists, find the conditions rather unusual, quite unlike any courtroom they have ever seen, as Carroll Bogert of Human Rights Watch reports: Visitors observe the hearings behind sound-proof glass, with an audio feed that runs 40 seconds behind. When something sensitive is said in the courtroom, the infamous “hockey light” on the judge’s bench lights up and the comment is bleeped out…. The degree of classification of banal matters is bewildering. A former camp commander issued a memo on exactly what material the defense lawyers were allowed to bring in to their clients. One thing that was not allowed to be brought in? The memo itself. nybooks/articles/archives/2014/mar/06/darkness-dick-cheney/?pagination=false
Posted on: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 06:19:38 +0000
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