Tom Parker is currently at Guantánamo to observe the military commissions proceedings against detainee Omar Khadr. This is his second post.
Another theme has emerged at the pre-trial military commission proceedings being conducted this week here at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo in the case of Omar Khadr – an unseemly rush to complete the hearings so that those attending can get back to the US mainland by the weekend.
The military judge overseeing the proceedings, Colonel Patrick Parrish, has not returned to any issue in the past few days as often as he has to reminding counsel that they have only a limited amount of time to examine their witnesses if they want to make their flights home.
Colonel Parrish is scrupulous in noting that he plans to stay on in Guantánamo for several days after the hearings end and that he is not in any way trying to hurry the lawyers, but of course his repeated interventions are having the opposite effect.
The military judge’s concern with staying on an arbitrary schedule seems most often to be directed at the defense as they try day after day, unsuccessfully, to find some way to introduce testimony about the “command climate” in the Bagram detention facility into evidence.
This matters because with no eyewitness to confirm Omar Khadr’s account of his abuse at the hands of his interrogators in the Bagram facility, where he was held for three months as a teenager before being transferred to Guantánamo in late October 2002, the best that the defense can do is to try to demonstrate that his allegations are reasonable and replicated in the experiences of other inmates.
Today we heard two separate interrogators, former US Army Specialist Damien Corsetti and Interrogator #17, try to speak to this issue despite multiple objections from the prosecution that were mostly upheld by the judge, along with heavy-handed hints that time was running out for the defense.
I have a growing sense that in the military commissions the cards are stacked heavily against Omar Khadr.