By Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. Neve is currently at Guantánamo to observe the military commissions proceedings against detainee Omar Khadr. This is his second in a series of posts from the field.
Photo: Alex Neve at Guantánamo Bay
Omar Khadr’s case has been in the military commission pipeline for several years – he was first charged in November 2005 under the system thrown out the following year by the US Supreme Court. His case has had various false starts under a variety of different versions of the military commission process.
His case has been slated to come up before the latest version of military commissions for months. Lawyers, journalists, observers, government and military officials have arrived – anticipating that key legal issues were finally going to get an airing. All this lead time; all this preparation – you would at least expect everything to be in place.
But there is no confidence at all that things are going to get off to a smooth start. One key piece of the equation that is missing is the set of rules to govern the military commission process under legislation passed in late 2009. Under the revised Military Commissions Act (MCA), signed by President Obama last October, the Secretary of Defense was supposed to submit to Congress within 90 days the rules for military commissions – that is, the Manual for Military Commissions. At the moment, the only manual that has been available is a 2007 version under the 2006 MCA.