US modifies rules of Guantanamo detainee trials

The Pentagon has announced some small procedural changes to the military commissions assigned to try terror suspects detained in the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The move aimed to abase international criticism that the trials are unfair, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, a military legal adviser, said the most important change involves altering the roles of the members of the military commissions, doing away with a system in which all of them act both judge and jury.

Contrary to earlier rules, the presiding officer of a military commission will now only decide questions of law.

All other members of such a commission will no longer play a role in most of such decisions. From now on, they will mainly decide questions of fact.

Among other changes, there is a revision of the wording. In a rule that says during the proceedings, defendants "may be present to the extent consistent with the need to protect classified information," the wording "may be " is replaced by "shall be."

However, local analysts said the revisions do not address some of the features that have attracted the most criticism.

For example, evidence that might have been obtained by coercion or even torture can still be admitted at the decision of the presiding officer, who may also allow other evidence that will normally be excluded from civilian courts, including hearsay, if he believes it tends to prove a particular position.

Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington-based lawyer, described the changes as "some tinkering around the periphery" and "not really significant or substantive."

The military commissions were set up by the Bush administration in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks to conduct war crime trials of terror suspects, the first of their kind since the WWII.

The war crime proceedings were halted last November when a US district judge ruled that they violated both domestic and international laws.

However, in July, an appellate panel of three judges, including John G. Roberts, Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, overturned the earlier verdict.

The war crime trials is likely to resume this fall.

Source: Xinhua