BUSH ADMINISTRATION MUST ANSWER
KEY QUESTIONS ON MILITARY COMMISSIONS:
On Eve of Hearings, Rights Group Asks Administration to Make Specific Commitments:
Will US commit to disclosing location, defendants, charges, verdicts and sentences?

Human Rights First opposes the use of military commissions and urges President Bush to rescind the military order that authorizes them. (Full statement available at www.humanrightsfirst.org.)  

Human Rights First supports the Administration’s commitment to bring perpetrators of serious crimes to justice.  In order to achieve that objective, we recommend that the Bush Administration explore a range of criminal justice alternatives to military commissions.  (A list of options appears below.)  

If the Administration continues to press for military commissions, Human Rights First urges Congress to use its oversight powers to strictly limit the circumstances under which these military commissions are used and to ensure openness and debate on the process.  

Key Questions for Attorney General Ashcroft

During hearings this week, it is imperative that Attorney General John Ashcroft declare – publicly and specifically – how the U.S. government will inform the American people and the world about trials conducted pursuant to the Executive Order.  When the Attorney General appears before the U.S. Senate this week, he should answer, at a minimum, the following questions: 

§         Will the Administration commit to disclosing the location and presiding official of any tribunal as soon as they are decided?

§         Will the Administration commit to disclosing defendants’ names and charges as soon as charges are made?

§         Will the Administration commit to disclosing the verdict (including vote count) and sentence within 24 hours of the sentence being handed down?

§         Will the Administration commit to requiring unanimous verdicts before imposing the death penalty, as required for ordinary military proceedings?

§         Will the Administration commit to making habeas review available for any defendant arrested, detained or tried in the United States? 

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Criminal Justice Alternatives

Human Rights First urges the Bush Administration consider the following criminal justice alternatives to military commissions: 

For suspects in the U.S. or extradited to the U.S. 

§         Suspects in or extradited to U.S. from Europe and elsewhere should be tried in U.S. courts. In recent years, the U.S. federal courts have successfully prosecuted similar cases and obtained key information that has helped U.S. law enforcement efforts.

For al Qaeda or Taliban suspects outside the U.S.

§         Build on an existing international criminal tribunal to try to try al Qaeda or Taliban suspects.  We would recommend expanding the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which is now trying Slobodan Milosevic.  To do this, the international community would establish a trial chamber and prosecutor’s office in the  Middle East or in South or Central Asia; this is what was done when the Rwanda Tribunal was established in Arusha, Tanzania

§         A fully autonomous international tribunal.  This would be a tribunal outside of the existing structure of the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

§         A Lockerbie-type Tribunal.  The tribunal that tried suspects in the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland was a Scottish court applying Scottish law while sitting in the ‘neutral third Country’ of the Netherlands.

§         A Nuremberg-type Tribunal, similar to the one that tried Nazi leaders. This tribunal was a joint military tribunal of the four powers occupying Germany after the Second World War.

§         Special Chamber of a UN transitional administration in Afghanistan could be established to try Al Qaeda and Taliban crimes as part of the long-term effort to establish the rule of law in Afghanistan.

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