ACLU's Romero reports from Gitmo

This week, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero will write his 
observations about the first preliminary hearings taking place at the 
Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. The hearings are part of the new system of military 
commissions set up by President Bush.

DISCLAIMER: The following remarks were dictated but not proofed or reread by 
Mr. Romero.  The content of this weblog may be updated or clarified once he 
has had a chance to read it upon his return and consult his notes.

Monday
08-22-04; 10:08 P.M. E.S.T. – GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA

Dear member of the ACLU family:

This will not read like an authoritative ACLU report on the Guantanamo 
Military Commissions; we hope to provide that later.

I’m dictating this weblog to give our ACLU colleagues and all of you a sense 
of what this black box known as Guantanamo is like.

I arrived yesterday on a commercial charter plane from Fort Lauderdale.  When 
my colleague from Amnesty International and I stepped off the plane, there was 
some confusion as to where we were supposed to be going.  Finally, after being 
assigned a roommate (I’m bunking with another colleague from Human Rights 
Watch), we got dinner at the Officers’ Club.

Without a specific itinerary planned for the Non-Governmental Organization 
(NGO) participants, we simply tagged along with the media contingent of more 
than 53 different reporters.  They ran the gamut from broadcast, print and 
wire services, including ABC, the Associated Press, the New York Times, CBS, 
Washington Post, Miami Herald and many others.

Beginning the day at 6 A.M., we almost got breakfast, but after piling into 
the bus and then piling into the mess hall, the cooks didn’t show up.  So we 
all got back on the bus and various industrious reporters began to make pots 
of coffee in the lobby of the Combined Bachelors Quarters (CBQ), which is 
where we’re staying.  Please don’t tell my partner that that’s what it’s known 
as.

After that, we started on the round of briefings regarding the Military 
Commissions, the [Enemy] Combatant Status Review tribunals and the facility 
where the commissions will be held this week.  I expect to be in the actual 
commission room even though most members of the media will be observing in a 
different building through closed-circuit television (only a small delegation 
of media is allowed each day in the room where the proceedings are taking 
place).  I’ll report back when I’ve actually observed the commissions and the 
tribunals.

But, let me give you a quick read of what I’ve learned today.

As to the commissions, we expect we will observe preliminary hearings for four 
of the accused.  The Military Commissions panel will be comprised of five 
members, presided over by Col. Peter Brownback III, an Army lawyer and the 
only attorney among the five.  We don’t expect to see any witnesses but we do 
expect the accused to be present in the commission room.  In these preliminary 
proceedings they will read the charges against the accused (i.e. like an 
arraignment).  They will explain the process to the accused and they will 
conduct voir dire of the commission members to ensure that they can sit on the 
commission.

As you know, we have raised serious concerns about how these commissions will 
proceed: the lack of an independent review outside the military chain of 
command, the expected use of secret evidence and the difficulties incurred by 
the defense counsel representing their clients.  I don’t expect that anything 
we’ll see this week will fundamentally alter our criticism on these three 
major points.

We also learned a great deal more about the Combatant Status Review tribunals. 
  Thirty-one tribunals have been completed thus far.  Nineteen of the accused 
have decided to participate, whereas 12 refused to participate.  Twenty-three 
determinations have been sent to Washington, D.C. for review, of which 14 have 
been validated as “enemy combatants.”  Of the 14, only one witness has 
appeared in these tribunals and none of the 14 have yet been informed of the 
validation of their designation as enemy combatants.

For the accused who do participate, the proceeding normally takes under two 
hours: one hour for the unclassified portion and one hour for the classified 
portion. For those who do not choose to participate, the entire Combatant 
Status Review takes approximately one hour. There are 585 men held here in 
Guantanamo and there are 177 open Combatant Status Review tribunals.

Two themes have come out of this first day of briefings.  One is the 
ambivalence that the military has toward NGO participants and even the broader 
media.  They want to give us access, but not too much access.  They want to be 
transparent, but the transparency can’t go too far.  For instance, tomorrow, 
members of the media will travel to Camp Delta, but unfortunately the NGO 
participants were told that we cannot attend that tour, even though we have 
been given full security clearance to sit in the commission room on Tuesday.

The second theme is that there is a great desire to show how the commissions 
and the tribunals are fair and just, and how they mirror the American system 
of justice.  But yet, when you compare the rules for both the commissions and 
the tribunals, you find serious departures from either military justice 
proceedings or regular criminal proceedings.  For instance, under the 
Combatant Status Review tribunals, which are “administrative” we were told, 
each detainee is assigned a personal representative who is not a legal 
representative and whose conversations with the detainee are not confidential 
in any way.  In fact, this personal representative is able to provide both 
exculpatory and inculpatory evidence that he gleans in his “personal 
representation” of the detainee.

How this all plays out, I hope to be able to tell you more in coming days.  As 
I said to one of the reporters today, this isn’t about the guys in the orange 
jumpsuits, this is about us.  This is about what rules and values will guide 
an American system of justice that we can hold up to Americans and to the 
entire world.  So far, I have no comfort to give on that front and I doubt 
that much will change by the end of the week.

I’ll keep you posted and talk to you tomorrow.  Please send suggestions for 
what you’d like me to report on in coming days at gitmo-d6/[email protected]  Let me know 
what’s on your mind.

Anthony D. Romero,
ACLU Executive Director

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