The Aug. 7 New York Times editorial captured the essence of the Salim Ahmad Hamdan trial: “Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired—has held its first trial. It produced … a guilty verdict.”
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Hamdan allegedly worked as one of Osama bin Laden’s drivers and was convicted of providing “material support for terrorism.” The absurdity of the charges leveled against Hamdan, compounded by torture and set against the background of impunity for the war criminals in the Bush administration, reduce Hamdan’s conviction to a travesty of justice.
Despite the White House’s official statement welcoming the verdict, the one-count conviction was also a setback for the Bush regime as Hamdan was acquitted on more serious charges.
Bush and his Congressional enablers faced an even more embarrassing defeat when the military court, despite being handpicked by civilian Bush administration officials, sentenced Hamdan to only five-and-a-half years. With the five years he served at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan applied toward his sentence, Hamdan should be free by the end of 2008. The prosecutors had asked for at least 30 years.
Hamdan was the first of as many as 80 such trials for detainees held in Guantanamo. These so-called military commissions allow testimony obtained by torture and hearsay evidence that would not—at least in theory—be allowed in U.S. courts. The prosecution has admitted that some of the evidence obtained through coercion was permitted.
Guantanamo detainees face torture techniques such as simulated drowning; beatings prior to interrogation, being forced to crouch in the nude for hours; “frequent flyer programs” where prisoners are moved from one place to another every few minutes; sensory deprivation such as blindfolding or dark cells with no human contact; and sensory overload through long exposures to loud music and bright lights.
Bush and his cronies hope that the military commission trials, through trumped-up charges and evidence obtained through torture, will produce a guaranteed string of convictions that might give their tottering “war on terror” some level of legitimacy.
Hamdan cannot count on his freedom, however. Bush claims that he can continue to hold “enemy combatants” until the end of his endless war on terror, which would render Hamdan’s relatively short remaining sentence meaningless.
The Bush Administration cynically attacks Cuba with made-up human rights violations while it runs a torture factory on occupied Cuban soil. Real justice would see the Guantanamo prisoners set free and the Bush administration war criminals brought to trial.
