American Civil Liberties Union

One of the cases before the military commission this week is the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was 15-year-old when he was detained in Bagram, Afghanistan in July 2002. He was transferred to Guantánamo in October 2002 and held without charges until November 2005. Omar was held for 40 months in solitary confinement, and according to his lawyers was subjected to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment at the hands of U.S. military personnel in both Bagram and Guantánamo.

Last Friday, President Bush signed the Child Soldiers Accountability Act into law. The act criminalizes the recruitment and use of child soldiers, and gives the government the authority to deport or deny entry into the United States individuals who engage in such activities. This law would bring the United States into greater compliance with its treaty obligations,especially those under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, ratified by the U.S. in 2002.

The events at today's hearing suggest distrust and suspicion from the handful of Guantánamo detainees who have been charged by the Bush administration toward the military commissions system. Guantánamo is a place where basic rights, like the right to effective access to counsel, which in a normal court is taken for granted, have to be fought for. Meanwhile, the U.S. government spends an enormous amount of resources constantly reinventing its skewed wheel of justice.

(Originally posted on Huffington Post.)

I've been observing the military commissions since 2004, and Guantánamo never felt more surreal or otherworldly than it did in what we hope were its final days of operation. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, while then President-elect Obama prepared for his inauguration the next day, the Guantánamo military commissions charged forward with the pretrial hearing of Omar Khadr, the mental competency hearing of Ramzi Bin l-Shibh, and other proceedings in the case of the "9/11 defendants," the men charged with co-conspiring in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Prior to the hearings on that Monday, the prosecution and defense teams in two cases filed a joint request to postpone the proceedings in anticipation of the changing of the guard in Washington. The military judges denied this request. Instead, "the show must go on" was the message in the days and hours before President Obama took the oath of office and had an opportunity to issue his executive orders. Neither prosecutors, defense lawyers, nor judges acknowledged during the Monday proceedings that there was an imminent change in the way the incoming administration would deal with the military commissions. Federal courts were closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but it was business as usual at Guantánamo. Ironically, even the Gitmo Gym was closed on Monday, but not the departing Bush administration's kangaroo courts! Three days later, President Obama issued executive orders to close Guantánamo within one year, suspend the military commissions, prohibit CIA prisons, and enforce the ban on torture.