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Guantanamo Judge Dismissed
Top military officials provided no explanation for why they dismissed the judge presiding over a key case at Guantanamo Bay.
The Miami Herald reports that the colonel presiding over the case had issued some rulings in favor of the defendant, Canadian national Omar Khadr.
Khadr's case has been on track to be one of the first to trial at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. Khadr, the son of an alleged al Qaeda financier, is accused of throwing a grenade that fatally wounded a U.S. Special Forces soldier.Military prosecutors had been pressing Brownback to set a trial date, but he has repeatedly directed them first to satisfy defense requests for access to potential evidence. At a hearing earlier this month, he threatened to suspend the proceedings altogether unless the detention center provided records of Khadr's confinement.
Kuebler said he believed the U.S. military is anxious for the trial to start before political pressure leads Canada to demand Khadr's repatriation.
Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement describing the abrupt change without explanation as evidence that the war court, created by Congress in 2006, is ``fundamentally flawed.''
Josh
Zachary
While I could wish this would result in another Amistad, I suspect it won't.
May 30, 2008 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
If our great ally Pakistan can do it, why can't we?
May 30, 2008 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wait, so in the "war on terror" it's illegal for the people we're at war with to attack American military targets? Doesn't sound much like a war.
May 30, 2008 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any chance we could have the full name of the judge dismissed? I know I saw it somewhere else in TPM, but it would be great to get basic information here in the story about him.
May 30, 2008 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Army Col. Peter Brownback III
It's in the Miami Herald story at the link.
May 30, 2008 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
My point was that it should have been in this story, as well. It's Journalism 101.
May 30, 2008 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
He is Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III.
May 30, 2008 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
The released judge is Army Col. Peter Brownback. A simple google search turned it up in a Reuters news article about this.
May 30, 2008 3:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
And it's also possible he was dismissed because the case is some 4 years old and a trial date hasn't yet been set. Judge Brownback declined again last month to set a date, sending prosecutors and defense lawyers to more fits of squabbling and finger-pointing.
May 30, 2008 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
did we need any more evidence that george bush is running KANGAROO COURTS ???
May 30, 2008 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kangaroo Courts are a necessary component of the Shell Game on Terror. They are the precedent setting component of the Deconstruction of the Constitution, necessary to make us 'safer'. It simply couldn't be any more clear and strait-forward! . . . ;-}
May 30, 2008 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thats a big 10-4 on the Kangaroo Courts.
JJ
http://www.Ultimate-Aonymity.com
May 30, 2008 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting news. It comes on the same day as a report that the former chief prosecutor at Gitmo, who resigned claiming that the trial process there was being politicized, was denied a routine commendation because of his resignation: http://caaflog.blogspot.com/2008/05/former-gitmo-prosecutor-denied-dmsm.html
May 30, 2008 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know we are all tired of congressional hearings without tangible results, but surely, since Congress wrote the new military commissions act, they have a right to investigate whether that law is being undermined by the abrupt removal of a judge who is not producing the result desired by the Bush administration.
Can a civilian authority remove a judge for no reason in the middle of a contraversial trial? I don't think so.
May 30, 2008 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Firing attorneys for not doing the Repubs dirty work was OK.... good thing they say they were not doing that...
So now the fire a judge because he won't do the Repubs dirty work... BIG FRIGGIN SUPRIZE....
Lets watch the media bury that story - just another annoyance...
And those hitler youth of the Republican party who fill news groups with Liberal Liberal liberals are crap liars slogans... they are the first bozos to turn a blind eye to the thugs running America.
They should know - they are on the payroll.
May 30, 2008 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe, just maybe, CANADA will call the USA on this one? It sure doesn't seem like Congress has managed to do enough to curtain our country's unfortunate impression of Soviet Russia.
May 30, 2008 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
How can the kangaroo court expect to get a pre-election conviction if the judge keeps abiding by the rule of law? Jeez. Off with his head! Isn't this precisely the sort of thing we used to condemn the USSR for? What have we become?
May 31, 2008 12:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Apparently the Khadr family and the Bush-leaning Canadian government don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, which may explain why the Canadian govt hasn't pushed harder on this. It is too bad, though--the kid was so young when all this happened.
Don't rule out the possibility of some kind of pardon for Khadr--orchestrated at the last minute by the Republican pres candidate and whoever he chooses as his running mate, as a demonstration of how reasonable the new Republican team will be. There won't be a dry eye in the house, and what a cheap way to buy back the votes of "moderate Republicans" who otherwise might vote Democratic. ("Ah, if only the long nightmare could be over--and with a Republican presiding over the repair of the Republican party...")
May 31, 2008 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, they are really going to pardon someone after having, like, zero convictions so far. They don't know any other way then leading with their jaws. The glass ones, that is.
June 1, 2008 2:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
What I find most shocking is the lack of knowledge and outrage from citizens about the illegal acts by our government and military. Thankfully it looks like we will have a president who will completely restore American democratic principles. But compared to the Vietnam era, the lack of real political protest from Americans shows a profound disengagement from politics as something one must pursue beyond cable TV and blogs. History will not judge us kindly for this, and we should start thinking now about how we will judge ourselves.
June 1, 2008 3:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, don't rule it out. (Some kind of wild pardon scenario.) The race for the exits of the NeoCon theater is on, and may intensify as the Republicans figure out how many seats they'll lose in November.
The "pardon" would be as politically driven as a conviction.
June 3, 2008 12:41 AM | Reply | Permalink