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Title: Guantanamo Defense Lawyer Resigns, Says U.S. Case Is 'Stacked'
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.npr.org/2014/08/31/34457 ... signs-says-u-s-case-is-stacked
Published: Sep 1, 2014
Author: NPR STAFF
Post Date: 2014-09-01 06:39:05 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 67
Comments: 10

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, is facing a military commission at Guantanamo Bay and potentially the death penalty. He was captured in 2003 but his case still hasn't gone to trial.

Last week, Maj. Jason Wright — one of the lawyers defending Mohammed — resigned from the Army. He has accused the U.S. government of "abhorrent leadership" on human rights and due process guarantees and says it is crafting a "show trial."

Wright joined the military in 2005. He served 15 months in Iraq during the surge and has worked as a Judge Advocate. For nearly three years, he served on Mohammed's defense team.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has claimed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and multiple attempted attacks against the U.S.i Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has claimed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and multiple attempted attacks against the U.S.

AFP/Getty Images Wright formally resigned on Aug. 26. Earlier this year, the Army had instructed him to leave the team in order to complete a graduate course that was required with his promotion from Captain to Major. He refused the order; he says it would have been unethical for him to have followed it.

Asking For Trust, Wearing The Captors' Uniform

Wright tells NPR's Arun Rath that it's hard to gain any client's trust, but it was especially hard with Mohammed. His former client is one of six "high-value detainees" being prosecuted at Guantanamo for offenses that could carry the death penalty.

"All six of these men have been tortured by the U.S. government," he says.

Wright says Mohammed in particular has faced a level of torture "beyond comprehension." He says his client was waterboarded by the CIA 183 times and subjected to over a week of sleep deprivation; there were threats that his family would be killed. "And those are just the declassified facts that I'm able to actually speak about," Wright says.

Given that treatment, Wright knew it would be hard for Mohammed to trust him.

"You show up several years later and you say, 'I'm from the U.S. government and I'm here to help you' ... and you add on the complexity that I wear the same uniform as the guards," he says. "It's very challenging in any situation to develop trust and confidence with a client. But when you add on that torture paradigm, it's all the more difficult."

Wright wasn't allowed to discuss too many details of the detainee abuse in court. He references a recent Foreign Policy article by Laura Pitter, of Human Rights Watch, about the notion of "original sin" and how it's complicated terrorism cases.

"The 'original sin' being the fact that the CIA tortured these men and that they've gone to extraordinary lengths to try to keep that completely hidden from public view," Wright says. "So the statute that Congress passed has a number of protections to ensure that no information about the U.S. torture program will ever come out."

Fighting Government's Influence

He says there are additional constraints on the defense teams that have made it hard to operate — including allegations of listening devices disguised as smoke detectors in attorney-client meeting rooms.

"So not only do you have statutory design, but you actually have, in practice, a very large effort to try to ensure that no ensure that no information about torture is ever made known in public," he says.

The hardest thing to deal with as a defense layer, he says, is fighting the government's influence.

"The U.S. government is trying to call this a fair trial, while stacking the deck so much against the defense and the accused that it can hardly be called a fair trial in any system in the world," he says.

Related NPR Stories

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who goes before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Saturday, has claimed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and multiple attempted attacks against the U.S. National Security For Alleged 9/11 Plotter, Attacks Were Family Affair With Changes To Guantanamo Trials, A New Feel To Proceedings The larger strategic implication for the government, he says, is that it gives a license for the rest of the world to torture and "set up secret military courts outside of public review and outside of due process.

"Leave aside our constitutional principles — which we should try to uphold irrespective of who the defendant may be — the Constitution has been completely stepped on throughout this entire process," he says. "That's a separate and distinct issue of how the U.S. now has shown just abhorrent leadership when it comes to actually following essential, fundamental human rights and due-process guarantees."

Wright says it doesn't matter what happens at trial; the government likely won't release the defendants even if they are acquitted. He contrasts it with the Nuremberg trials after World War II, where the chief prosecutor promised Nazi war criminals would be set free if they weren't found guilty.

"We have a system where if someone's acquitted, they will not be set free," he says. "That is actually the very definition of a show trial."

Refusing Orders

Earlier this year, the Army instructed Wright to leave the team in order to complete a required graduate course with his promotion from Captain to Major. The course can be deferred for a variety of reasons; Wright had already deferred once. But his latest request for a deferral was denied without explanation.

"So really I only had two choices," he says. "I could either accept and voluntarily leave my own self from the case and my obligations to my client. Or I could refuse the orders."

He decided would be an ethical violation to abandon his client voluntarily, so he refused the orders. "And when you refuse the orders, you have to resign from the Army," he says.

Wright served his last day on Mohammed's defense team; he formally resigned from the Army on Aug. 26.

He believes his departure will be very disruptive to the Mohammed case and potentially the other defense teams.

"Here you have government attorneys who tell a defendant, 'I'm your attorney, I'm here to help you, and I'm going to be here 'til the end.' And half-way through this process, the U.S. government — the same government that tortures you, the same government that's trying to kill you, the same government that provides the public defender — now gets to control when defense attorneys come and go," he says.

Mohammed's legal saga has stretched out for years — he was captured in 2003 but the government didn't bring charges until 2012. Wright says he can't speculate how long it will take for a trial to start.

Read The Statements

Full Response Statement On The Denial Of Army Maj. Jason Wright's Course Deferral Response Statement On Allegations Regarding The Defense Of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Pentagon Responds

NPR asked the Pentagon to comment on Wright's interview. A spokesman from the Army wrote:

"The Judge Advocate General denied the second deferral request because a suitable and competent military defense attorney replacement was available, Major Wright was not the lead or sole counsel, and it ensured Major Wright remained professionally competent and competitive for promotion." And a spokesman for the military commissions also disputes Wright's characterization of the commission, including his allegations of planted listening devices. He wrote:

"The prosecution has never listened to a single attorney-client communication, and no entity of the U.S. government is listening to, monitoring, or recording attorney-client communications at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay." However, there are ongoing investigations into allegations that the FBI attempted to make a member of a detainee's legal team into a confidential informant.

The government also disputes Wright's claim that the proceedings amount to a show trial, saying, "The on-going detention of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is fully consistent with the law of armed conflict, and that detention is reviewable by petition for habeas corpus in United States federal civilian court."

They also point to the convicted detainees who have served out their sentences and returned to their home countries.

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#1. To: Ada, christine, Jethro Tull, *antifa* (#0)

Wright says Mohammed in particular has faced a level of torture "beyond comprehension." He says his client was waterboarded by the CIA 183 times and subjected to over a week of sleep deprivation; there were threats that his family would be killed. "And those are just the declassified facts that I'm able to actually speak about," Wright says.

Laibach - The Whistleblowers

A time will come when we will be treated like this.

Deasy  posted on  2014-09-01   8:37:10 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Ada (#0)

What a charade.

KSM didn't/couldn't mastermind diddly.

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod  posted on  2014-09-01   9:46:05 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Lod (#2)

I wonder how many versions of the story they got from him between dunks.

Deasy  posted on  2014-09-01   9:46:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Deasy, 4 (#3)

Did he reveal how he was able to make NORAD stand-down?

Give me a break.

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod  posted on  2014-09-01   9:54:08 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: Lod, scrapper2 (#4)

Did he reveal how he was able to make NORAD stand-down?

That was a coincidence in dunking 124. His story was so real, and it corroborated some stupid idea that the agent in charge had, so the torture team decided to dunk him a bunch more times. They couldn't get him to repeat 124 again because he forgot it the minute they dunked him the 125th time.

What insanity.

Deasy  posted on  2014-09-01   21:59:11 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: Deasy (#5)

What insanity.

2 things are insane imo:

a. that you think I'd be interested in a story about KSM having a junior attorney on his defense TEAM replaced by another junior attorney

b. that you think I'd be surprised that 6 years into his inept reign, Obungler hasn't kept his promises to his gullible voters (like you) that one of the first things he would do after winning the WH would be to shut down Gitmo and bring terrorist suspects like KSM stateside to have "fair trials" stateside, despite the DemRat party controlling both the House and the Senate the first 2 years he occupied the WH. To this day Obama keeps "high value" suspects at Gitmo and will have them tried by a military tribunal sometime in the future ( wink, wink). But go ahead and keep blaming Bush for Obama's failures, if it makes your balls tingle.

scrapper2  posted on  2014-09-02   17:51:05 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: scrapper2, Lod, Jethro Tull, Cynicom (#6)

But go ahead and keep blaming Bush for Obama's failures, if it makes your balls tingle.

I didn't intend to cut Obama any slack. Please show me where I've ever done that. The Bush cabinet brought the Clinton intervention fiascoes to a whole new level. Obama seems to be dancing with his own set of puppet masters.

The fact is that 9/11 coincided with Bush's peak PNAC cabinet representation, and we attacked Afghanistan because they wouldn't tell us which cave bin Laden was occupying. GitMo is Bush's spawn from hell. Use of special renditions and torture is Bush's innovation. The war on Iraq over self-hiding WMD and 1.5 million dead and climbing is Bush's project. Bush got congress and the U.N. stepping and fetching to the war on terror based on lies. Now congress is weak-kneed and is reluctant to give back the powers it took for itself after 9/11.

Obama is incompetent, impeachable for any number of Holder's actions alone, and deserves to have his Nobel prize revoked. But he didn't start two wars without an exit strategy, and Cynicom believes the brouhaha in Ukraine is for show. Bush is by far one of the worst presidents we've ever had. We sort of deserve Obama after electing Bush twice. Liberals deserve Obama, too.

Deasy  posted on  2014-09-02   21:43:26 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: Deasy (#7)

Now congress is weak-kneed and is reluctant to give back the powers it took for itself after 9/11.

Uhhh...exactly what powers has congress exerted/taken in the last thirty years?

Those limp-dick, numb-nuts are the most worthless crew ever assembled, imo

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod  posted on  2014-09-02   22:10:26 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: Lod (#8)

This is a subtle point but bear with me:

There's continuity of government stuff lurking in the NDAAs and Patriot Acts. Congress and cabinet level officials get all sorts of goodies to protect themselves in the event of a national emergency. Also, they see military operated prisons and courts as a means for wielding power because they have review over military affairs. They won't roll back the Patriot Acts, nor will they restore Habeas Corpus stripped by the NDAAs and EOs (which they could) because it secretly gives them more power to do unconstitutional things like special rendition of suspects offshore, and secret tribunals.

Notice how Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer are always asking for more draconian powers to be ceded to these bits of legislation.

Deasy  posted on  2014-09-02   22:32:05 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: Lod, Ada (#2)

What a charade.

KSM didn't/couldn't mastermind diddly.

How in the world did his people wrap the concrete columns with thermite cutting charges in the basement? And every floor of both towers so they'd pancake down while leaving no structural steel longer than 20 feet, just the right length for the trailers that hauled it to the waiting Chinese ships?

Hey, when planning a huge insurance scam one must be certain that the unions don't milk the money cow for (unnecessarily slow thanks to OSHA) demo work such as cutting up steel on site.

The steel readily responded to strategically placed cutting charges, and the asbestos abatement job (a estimated one billion dollars just for the scaffolding rental) was cleverly avoided by allowing New Yorkers to vacuum it (and the micro nuke radiation) up with their lungs.

HOUNDDAWG  posted on  2014-09-03   1:10:32 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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