fair trial

In January 2002, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush that a benefit of not applying the Geneva Conventions to detainees picked up in the Afghanistan conflict would be that prosecutions of US personnel under the US War Crimes Act would be more difficult. Two weeks later, on 7 February 2002, the President signed a memorandum confirming that no Taleban or al-Qa’ida detainees would qualify as prisoners of war, and that Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions would not apply to them either.

Common Article 3 guarantees minimum standards of fair trial. It also prohibits torture, cruel treatment and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment".

"It's a kangaroo court system and completely corrupt," said Michael Ratner, the president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which is co-ordinating investigations and appeals lawsuits against the government by some 1,000 lawyers. "Stalin had show trials, but at Guantanamo they are not even show trials because it all takes place in secret."

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held for 558 detainees at the Guantanamo in 2004 and 2005. All but 38 detainees were determined to be "enemy combatants" who could be held indefinitely without charges. Detainees were not represented by a lawyer and had no access to evidence. The only witnesses they could call were other so-called "enemy combatants".