Nuremberg prosecuter says Gitmo Trials Unfair

[illinoisprogressive]

The U.S. war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo have betrayed the principles of fairness that made the Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg a judicial landmark, one of the U.S. Nuremberg prosecutors said on Monday.

"I think Robert Jackson, who's the architect of Nuremberg, would turn over in his grave if he knew what was going on at Guantanamo," Nuremberg prosecutor Henry King Jr. told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"It violates the Nuremberg principles, what they're doing, as well as the spirit of the Geneva Conventions of 1949."

King, 88, served under Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court justice who was the chief prosecutor at the trials created by the Allied powers to try Nazi military and political leaders after World War Two in Nuremberg, Germany.

"The concept of a fair trial is part of our tradition, our heritage," King said from Ohio, where he lives. "That's what made Nuremberg so immortal -- fairness, a presumption of innocence, adequate defense counsel, opportunities to see the documents that they're being tried with."

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN6B38479920070611

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Right on.

They tried some of the evilest characters ever at Nuremberg -- Bormann, Hess, Goering and Speer, just to name a few -- and even those SOBs had lawyers and were presumed innocent and were tried in public without using secret evidence. If the fucking Nazis got fair public trials and the world didn't end, why is it such a threat to civilization if a fair public trial is afforded to some obscure character who is alleged to have once had lunch with Osama Bin Laden's dentist?

[illinoisprogressive]

2. I read this book written by the psychologist at Nuremburg and his recounting of it.