Gitmo justice: coercion 'evidence' allowed in 'trials'

Just as the Bush administration appears to have a made a move that is only superficially positive in relation to their warrantless wiretapping operations, a new manual has been put together (BBC News) by the United States government on how to give detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere what can only loosely be considered trials, their name: "military commissions". See the manual here. Anyone who hoped new Defense Secretary Robert Gates would be a voice of moderation on this specific issue is wrong; he was the one who presented the manual to Congress.

These new rules are extremely unfair to people we don't even know are guilty at GITMO, [from the above BBC article:] "new rules would allow terror suspects to be imprisoned on the basis of hearsay or coerced testimony - if a judge ruled the evidence credible". This is a follow-up of the passing of Military Commissions Act of 2006, passed by Congress last year, which infringed on basic human rights as well as the US Constitution. And America is called the 'home of the free'? The funny thing is that by saying that coerced testimony is allowed in these 'trials', the government is admitting it does coerce (torture), which everyone knew anyway!

Up next: the amazing recent testimony of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Congress and more on Bush's expanding executive power in his "war on terror".


UPDATE: British report slams (BBC News) Gitmo and calls for its absolute closure.

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