Guantanamo trial changes 'desperate'

The US military lawyer representing Australian David Hicks says changes to the conduct of trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees is a "desperate attempt" by the Pentagon to continue the cases.

The Pentagon has announced changes to the way it will conduct military trials of foreign terrorism suspects.

But critics have dismissed the changes as window dressing that has failed to fix fundamental defects.

"No substantive change was made to the process," said a statement by the lawyers representing Hicks, Marine Corps Major Michael Mori and civilian Joshua Dratel.

"The most recent manipulations of the military commission procedures represent a desperate attempt to salvage the failed commission process and a confirmation that Mr Hicks will not receive a fair trial."

Hicks' Adelaide lawyer David McLeod says the changes are an improvement, but are still flawed.

Mr McLeod says the changes do not increase defence access to trial information or provide any additional rights to Hicks, but still allow the jury members to take part in the questioning process.

"I'm very pleased that some focus has been put on changing the commission process, which is clearly unfair and has been determined to be unfair by so many eminent jurists and international academics and the Law Council of Australia," he said.

"Unfortunately the changes are nothing more than window dressing."

The steps, approved by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, include changing the roles of the presiding officer and the other members of the military tribunals that will conduct the trials.

"We made these changes and have been working on it for some time to try to produce a better and more efficient system," Air Force Brigadier General Thomas Hemingway, a legal adviser in the trial process, said.

"I don't consider it an admission that the system was flawed. I've maintained consistently that we would try to make those improvements that were necessary to the process as we moved along."

Amnesty International's observer to the trials Jumana Musa says many problems remain.

These include allowing the admission of evidence obtained through torture or hearsay and the US military's refusal to allow any independent judicial review.

"You can't have any kind of fair system of justice that can change at any moment," Mr Musa said.

Amnesty and other human rights organisations have been critical of the trial process and wider issues concerning the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo since 2002.

The changes were announced after a federal appeals court ruled in July that Pentagon plans for special panels of military officers to try foreign terrorism suspects were lawful.

The appeals court ruling reversed a lower court decision that halted these "military commission" proceedings last year.

The first trials due to resume are the cases of Hicks and Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

- Reuters/ABC

Link Here