Bush Tribunal Order Likely
to Cause Damage For Decades to Come

Major Human Rights Organizations Join in Denouncing Order

December 3, 2001

Eight major human rights organizations today called on President Bush to rescind his order authorizing military commissions to try suspected terrorists. The groups called the order “fundamentally flawed” and a precedent which dictators and tyrants around the world may invoke “for decades to come….” Because the order is such a dangerous precedent and because “certain aspects of the order cannot be remedied no matter what procedures are subsequently adopted,” the groups argue that the order must be rescinded.

Signing the letter were the Executive Directors of Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, the International Human Rights Law Group, the International League for Human Rights, Human Rights First, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights.

The groups argue, among other things, that:

• The order fails to establish minimum guarantees for human rights and may be adopted by other nations and used as a basis for repressing people, including American citizens, seeking to exercise basic freedoms.
  
  
• The order likely will “do great harm to the United States effort to maintain the strong support of the world community in its pursuit of the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks” and will be seen as illegitimate by most nations.
  
  
• Because the President has unfettered discretion to select persons to be tried by these military commissions and is also the ultimate decision-maker on any appeal from their judgments, the order itself is fundamentally flawed.
  
  
• The order is inconsistent with previous US opposition to similar orders issued by other nations and, as a result, the “credibility and effectiveness of the United States in opposing such repressive procedures will be seriously harmed by this precedent.”
  

The groups recognize that the specific procedures to be used to implement the order remain to be established and that the order “does not place a ceiling on the procedures that may be applied by the military commissions.” Nonetheless, for the reasons listed above, the groups believe that the order cannot be repaired and should be rescinded.

For additional information, please contact Stephen Rickard or Adrienne Quarry at 202-547-5692.