Amann Comments on Guantánamo
Diane Marie Amann, professor of law and war crimes and international law expert, commented in The Christian Science Monitor on Australian David Hicks, who pleaded guilty to a charge that he provided material support to Al Qaeda by attending a string of terror training camps in Afghanistan and taking up positions armed with an AK-47 assault rifle to help repel an expected American offensive after the 9/11 terror attacks.
While Defense Department officials are hailing the Hicks' guilty plea as an important milestone, marking the first conviction of a defendant facing a military commission trial, many legal analysts say Hicks appears to have pleaded guilty to avoid a trial he knew would never be fair.
"I think it is easy to read his guilty plea as simply a surrender to a system that had been detaining him without a possibility of any kind of resolution for a very long time," says Amann. "I don't think we can say [the plea] proves the commissions are legitimate and that they are going to operate fairly."
The Christian Science Monitor/March 30, 2007
While Defense Department officials are hailing the Hicks' guilty plea as an important milestone, marking the first conviction of a defendant facing a military commission trial, many legal analysts say Hicks appears to have pleaded guilty to avoid a trial he knew would never be fair.
"I think it is easy to read his guilty plea as simply a surrender to a system that had been detaining him without a possibility of any kind of resolution for a very long time," says Amann. "I don't think we can say [the plea] proves the commissions are legitimate and that they are going to operate fairly."
The Christian Science Monitor/March 30, 2007