Military lawyers call prisoner trials unfair
Neil A. Lewis NYT Tuesday, May 4, 2004
WASHINGTON The Bush administration's plan to use military tribunals to try some of the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which has faced considerable skepticism, has been receiving some of its sharpest attacks from the military defense lawyers who are participating in the process.
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Senior government planners once expected that the first of the prisoners to go before a tribunal would plead guilty as part of an agreement to reduce their jail time. But the five military lawyers assigned to defend the first group of prisoners have radically altered that hope, officials acknowledge.
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The uniformed lawyers have been especially forceful, not only in asserting their clients' innocence but also in denouncing the military tribunal system as inherently unfair.
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Last month, an audience at Oxford University in England was stunned, witnesses said, when two of the lawyers, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift of the U.S. Navy and Major Mark Bridges of the U.S. Army, said that the tribunals were not capable of producing a fair and just result.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/518249.html