Delay sought in first war crimes trial
on Nov 8, 2005 at 8:04 pm
(On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the military tribunals President Bush has created to try war crimes charges against foreign terrorist suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That case is Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, docket 05-184. The following is one in a continuing series of reports on the effect of Supreme Court actions on legal cases involving the war on terrorism.)
Attorneys for David Matthew Hicks, the Australian accused of war crimes charges and scheduled to be the first to be prosecuted before a U.S. “military commission,” on Tuesday asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to delay the scheduled Nov. 18 start of those proceedings.
Citing the Supreme Court’s order a day earlier agreeing to rule on the commission’s legality under U.S. law, the Constitution, and international law, Hicks’ lawyers said in their filing: “What is critical is that the commission process not go forward while Mr. Hicks has viable claims that the military commissions should be stopped.”
The Pentagon’s military commission office since Sept. 20 has been planning to move forward with Hicks’ case. At a scheduled preliminary hearing on Nov. 18, the tribunal is expected to hear and rule on some three-dozen pre-trial motions by the defense team. Among those are motions to dismiss and motions challenging the structure of the commission. “These motions will directly impact the nature and scope of Mr. Hicks’s military commission trial,” his attorneys told U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. (His case is docketed in her Court as 02-299 — one of the continuing habeas challenges by Guantanamo detainees.)
Hicks’ attorneys tried to anticipate the government’s expected opposition to a stay, telling Judge Kollar-Kotelly that they expected the same kinds of arguments that the Justice Department made in an unsuccessful effort to head off Supreme Court review until after commission proceedings had ended.
Pentagon officials have leveled war crimes charges against nine Guantanamo detainees, including Hicks and Salim Ahmed Hamdan. Charges in five of those cases were announced on Monday, adding to the existing four.
