Update: Obama Moves To Halt Legal Proceedings at Guantanamo

[Richard Tafoya]

AP:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/01/gitmo_court_adjourned_for_a_day_or_forever.php

A military judge adjourned the Guantanamo Bay war crimes court just before President Barack Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, leaving open the possibility that the hearings might not resume.

The judge, Army Col. Patrick Parrish, dismissed the court until Wednesday "unless otherwise ordered," a nod to the possibility that the Obama administration might suspend the military trials as it wrestles with how to proceed with its plan to close the prison that now holds about 245 men on suspicion of links to terrorism, al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Obama has said he will close Guantanamo and many expect he will suspend the widely criticized war-crimes trials created by former President George W. Bush and Congress. Obama's nominee for attorney general has said the so-called military commissions lack sufficient legal protections for defendants and that they could be tried in the United States.


Despite the doubts about its future, military judges decided to press on with this week's session, which brought dozens of lawyers, witnesses and officials to the U.S. base in Cuba for several days of pretrial hearings in the case of Canadian Omar Khadr, who is accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan, and the five men charged with orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks.

[DoubleEdgeSword]

Good. I hope he orders it tomorrow. The sooner, the better.

[pinky]

Executive Order #1.

[Richard Tafoya]

I figured Executive Order #1 would be the reversal of several of Bush's Executive Orders.

[db44]

God bless (feels strange for me to say that) so many people that are doing their part to undo the Bush era. God bless Parrish. Wasn't he just in the last few days assigned to the resurrection of the Gitmo trials? People know the evils we've endured for eight years, and some had their hands tied. This day has restored my faith in so many ways.

[Richard Tafoya]

Obama Seeks Halt to Legal Proceedings at Guantanamo

Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/20/AR2009012004743.html

In one of its first actions, the Obama administration instructed military prosecutors late Tuesday to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving detainees at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- a clear break with the approach of the outgoing Bush administration.

The instruction came in a motion filed with a military court in the case of five defendants accused of organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The motion called for "a continuance of the proceedings" until May 20 so that "the newly inaugurated president and his administration [can] review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases currently pending before military commissions, specifically."

The same motion was filed in another case scheduled to resume Wednesday, involving a Canadian detainee, and will be filed in all other pending matters.

Such a request may not be automatically granted by military judges, and not all defense attorneys may agree to such a suspension. But the move is a first step toward closing a detention facility and system of military trials that became a worldwide symbol of the Bush administration's war on terrorism and its unyielding attitude toward foreign and domestic critics.