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Senator Hits At Guantanamo Trials Plan
Demetri Sevastopulo
Financial Times
August 3, 2006
A key Republican senator expressed concern yesterday over a new White House proposal to revamp the military commissions at GuantanamoBay that would prevent prisoners from seeing some evidence.
Lindsey Graham, a former military lawyer and influential member of the Senate armed services committee, told Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, that he would opposed attempts by the administration to prevent prisoners who were being tried before military commissions from seeing classified evidence against them. "I am going to be on the opposite side of you on classified information," Mr. Graham told Mr. Gonzales at a committee hearing.
Mr. Gonzales outlined the administration's proposals, which include allowing hearsay under certain circumstances and withholding classified evidence from a detainee. The administration has been forced to return to the drawing board after the Supreme Court recently ruled that its military commissions contravened US law and the Geneva Conventions.
Mr. Gonzales said Congress and the administration needed to strike a careful balance to ensure that prisoners received a fair trial that did not compromise national security. But Mr. Graham, who alongside Senator John McCain has been a leading advocate of treating prisoners humanely, said he was concerned that the proposals could set a dangerous precedent.
"If an American service member is being tried in a foreign land, would we want to have that trial conducted in a fashion that the jury would receive information about the accused's guilt not shared with the accused and that person be subject to penalty of death? I have a hard time with that," said Mr. Graham. "So the question may become . . . if the only way we can try this terrorist is to disclose classified information, and we can't share it with the accused, I would argue, 'Don't do the trial . . . because it could come back to haunt us'."
The American Civil Liberties Union said the draft legislation would ratify the "illegal military commissions".
The Supreme Court ruled that the commissions must comply with common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. But Mr. Gonzales said the administration was concerned by the "vague" language of the provision and wanted more clarity.
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