US Military Lawyer: Bush’s Military Commissions Are Kangaroo Courts

Yes, Virginia, there’s still some decent Americans left. Step forward US Air Force Reserve officer and military lawyer Lt, Cl. Yvonne Bradley, JAG.

Bradley is in London to research the defence of her assigned defendant, Ethiopian Binyan Muhammed, about to undergo US ‘justice’ at a Bush/Gonzales military commssion in Guantanamo Bay.

Everything we see, read and hear at the moment is rehearsed, rehashed or re-spun: it’s all stuff we know already. No one speaks off the cuff any more. So it was startling and heartening to to hear what Bradley had to say on the subject on Today Programme this morning.

[Sorry, the clip’s available only until tomorrow morning SFAIK].

This isn’t an official transcript but my own, so any errors are mine and the ellipses occur where the interviewer makes a statement or goes off to some other interviewee.

BBC: Introduction of Lt Col Bradley, brief outline of history of military commissions.

YB: I cannot compare when I stand outside the Old Bailey and consider military commissions… here I see fairness and due process..justice. In Guanatanamo none of those things will exist. There is no way, I’m convinced, that anyone would recieve a fair trial under the current rules, the current procedures…that they are all designed for one thing – to assure the government a conviction.

BBC:You think the result is already predetermined and no matter what the defence the result will be “Guilty, Guilty, Guilty”?

YB: No matter what brilliant defence anyone can present with in the commissions will result in one thing and I think you put it beautifully – guilty. guilty. guilty. I have to call it the way it is, it’s a kangaroo court.

BBC: Given your major misgivings why are you taking part in these military commissions? Should’nt you be washing your hands of them and saying “I’m having nothing to do with it”?

YB: Part of the system is having defence attorneys who will advocate for their client. In cases of this nature, which may be more political, this may take place outside the courtroom.

BBC: interviewer cuts to US officials Thomas L Hemingway and John Bellinger and Amnesty Intl re military commissions act and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s ‘confession’

YB: I am totally convinced that in 15, 20, 40 years from now we’ll look back on these trials the same way as we look back on the McCarthy era, the same way we look back on Japanese internment, the way we look back at some of the great injustices that happen and say “What did we do, what were we thinking’?

This an an open acknowledgement by serving US military that these military commissions are political show trials and that JAG lawyers are prepared to enter the political arena to fight them. Chalk up another first for Bushco, bringing military lawyers in civilian politics.

But as it turns out what Bradley said wasn’t quite off the cuff. She’sspoken out from the outset and all the way through the process not only putting her military career in jeopardy but risking military discipline herself by continuing to speak out against their illegality even during the hearings themselves:

The issues regarding legal representation then took a surprising turn. Maj. Bradley told the commission that due to an ethical conflict, she could not proceed as Muhammad’s detailed military counsel without violating the rules of the Pennsylvania Bar (where she is licensed to practice). She did not explain what the ethical issue was, but it was clear from the proceedings that counsel and Col. Kohlmann had discussed it in a private meeting and through other communications. Col. Kohlmann ordered Maj. Bradley to fulfill her duty to zealously represent her client and told her that if she disobeyed his order, she did so at her “own peril.”

Now, there have been at least two other military commissions cases in which the Presiding Officer has had to order military defense counsel to represent his/her client: in the case of al Bahlul and yesterday in Omar Ahmed Khadr’s case. In each, in the end and under protest, military lawyers did participate in the proceedings – in some fashion – on their client’s behalf. But today, Maj. Bradley did not. Instead, when Col. Kohlmann asked her to begin voir dire – in which counsel question the Presiding Officer to ascertain potential bias – Maj. Bradley stood and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. It is hard for me to convey on the page the impact of Maj. Bradley’s decision not to participate in the proceedings against her client, despite Col. Kohlmann’s direct order.

Col. Kohlmann then told Maj. Bradley that if she had no questions, he would find that her client waived his rights to voir dire. Maj. Bradley responded that she wasn’t saying yes or no to voir dire, but that she couldn’t move forward as counsel given the ethical conflict she faced in this case. And so it went on:

:

Now that’s what I call a decent lawyer and a decent human being. If only there were more.

Incidentally it looks like the military may have been having a little tidy up of any favourable military references to Bradley they may have had on the web. this was part one of a series on Bradley on an Air Force website: unfortunately the rest of the series appears no longer to be available online. I had to resurrect it from a plaintext story digest that the military webcleaners appear to have missed.

Sun, 9 Jul 2006 10:45:48 GMT Officer Defends Alleged Terrorist — and Truth, Justice and the American Way http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123022626

Major Yvonne R. Bradley works in the 913th Legal Office as the assistant staff judge advocate. She is also the only Air Force Reserve officer assigned to represent an alleged terrorist from among the detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba.

Mr. Binyam Mohamed is an Ethiopian citizen currently being detained at ‘Gitmo’ on alleged conspiracy charges to commit terrorist acts. He is one of only ten people to be formally charged with a crime among the approximately 500 detainees being held, said Maj. Bradley. He is also her client.

She became involved in 2005 when she responded to a request for Judge Advocate General officers to volunteer to assist with military commission cases. Maj. Bradley was selected, along with two other civilian attorneys, to represent Mr. Binyam.

He and the nine alleged co-conspirator are set to stand “trial” before a commission headed by a military officer and judged by a panel of senior military officers, said Maj. Bradley.

According to the Major, her client is faced with a dilemma of trust. Shortly after Christmas in 2005, Maj. Bradley went to visit Mr. Mohamed at ‘Gitmo’ to prepare her case. The visit was full of tension.

“Tense, that’s the best way I can put it,” said Maj. Bradley. “Here you have someone who …never knew me, someone in a uniform, and you can imagine someone who says he has been tortured (by people wearing uniforms) seeing me walking into his cell saying ‘I’m your attorney, I’m here to help you.'”

At the first hearing in April, Mr. Binyam addressed the presiding officer, said Maj. Bradley.

“I think my client put it best when he told the presiding officer ‘imagine if you were in Afghanistan or Pakistan and you got picked up by Bin Laden or forces controlled by Bin Laden and these individuals tell you they’re going to give you a full and fair trial after you’ve been picked up and they put you in jail. Then, you’re sitting in your jail cell and who walks in but a guy in a turban and beard who’s saying ‘I’m your attorney; I’m here to represent you,’ how much trust would you put in that individual? That’s the same situation that he’s in.”

“And then an American soldier — (Mr. Binyam) feels Americans have been torturing him for the last four years — walks in there and says ‘Oh, I’m your lawyer, trust me, I’m going to give you a fair trial.’ I understand …’ Would you ever trust that individual? I don’t think a uniformed service member can ever gain his confidence.”

Mr. Binyam currently has no choice but to accept the counselors he is provided by the United States, including Maj. Bradley, whether he trusts them or not. Unlike the federal court system in which a person is afforded the right to represent himself, the special commission does not recognize that right for the detainees at Guantanamo, but imposes counsel from the U.S. military. According to Maj. Bradley, he only gets to see his counselors at best every five to six weeks for a day or two, and has no contact with them or the outside world between visits. “There’s no way to establish trust,” she said.

Maj. Bradley and other military counselors have made appeals to the presiding officer of the commission to allow Mr. Binyam and the other accused detainees to represent themselves, as many of them have expressed a desire to do so. So far, self-representation doesn’t seem likely for him.

An alleged terrorist conspirator and the U.S. government are facing truth, justice and the American way. And, Maj. Bradley is right in the middle of it. In the meantime, she is determined to represent her client to the best of her ability, despite the obstacles. However, the conflicts become exponential when her very representation itself comes into question legally and ethically…

This story is the first in a three part series on Maj. Yvonne Bradley’s representation of an alleged terrorist in hearings at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba.

913aw.pa@willowgrove.af.mil (SrA. Dan Lanphear) http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123022626 Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:52:05 GMT

Politics and censors notwithstanding, I’m glad Lt.Col. Bradley continues to speak out, even if she has to go abroad to do it, and I hope more JAG lawyers join in.

On the other hand there’s a lot to think through here, particularly the implications of serving military lawyers becoming involved in civilian politics. This blurring of the boundaries is potentially very dangerous for civil society.

But Gonzales and Bush have so far perverted even the bare notion of justice that it may take a few good men and women to step outside their defined roles and put it right again.