Rights Group Voices Continued Concern with New Military Commissions Legislation

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Washington, DC – Human Rights First called today's Senate passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2009 as part of the Department of Defense authorization bill an improvement on existing law, but noted that the new procedures still fail to meet U.S. constitutional and international law fair trial standards. The group noted that no amount of change will purge the taint caused by the second-class system of justice that military commissions have come to represent. The final bill, which the House passed two weeks ago, will now go to the President for signature.

"This bill improves upon procedures that were put into practice after passage of the 2006 Military Commissions Act, but it does not erase or address the problems that are inherently related to these proceedings," said Human Rights First Advocacy Counsel Devon Chaffee. "Military commissions lack the legitimacy of regular federal criminal courts and their continued use threatens to perpetuate the legacy of failed trial and detention policies at Guantánamo."

During the past seven years, only three prisoners have been convicted using military commissions. During that same time, the commissions have been reformed three times. Human Rights First acknowledges that the bill passed by the Senate today provides some needed reforms, such as by prohibiting the admission of evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and increasing defense access to resources, but serious flaws remain intact. For example, the bill:

Continues to permit the admission of coerced testimony obtained at the point of capture or during closely related active combat engagement;

• Includes an overbroad definition of who can be tried before military commissions, one that extends trials in this forum to juveniles and those not even engaged in hostilities; and
• Permits defendants to be tried ex-post facto for conduct not considered to constitute a war crime at the time it was committed.

Moreover, Human Rights First notes that the continued use of military commissions is inappropriate so long as the United States' regular, federal criminal courts are open and operating.

"Military commissions perpetuate the stigma of Guantánamo and fail to achieve our nation's key objective of holding those who commit crimes accountable. That's a reality that no legislation can erase," Chaffee concluded. "On the other hand, the federal court system has convicted 195 suspected terrorists since 9/11. That's the system we know works, and that's the system we should use."

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