KABUL, Afghanistan — Dozens of Afghan men who were previously held by the United States at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are now being tried here in secretive Afghan criminal proceedings based mainly on allegations forwarded by the U.S. military.
The prisoners are being convicted and sentenced to as much as 20 years' confinement in trials that typically run between half an hour and an hour, said human-rights investigators who have observed them. One early trial was reported to have lasted barely 10 minutes, an investigator said.
The prosecutions are based, in part, on a security law promulgated in 1987, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Witnesses do not appear in court and cannot be cross-examined. There are no sworn statements of their testimony.
Instead, the trials appear to be based almost entirely on terse summaries of allegations that are forwarded to the Afghan authorities by the U.S. military.
"These are no-witness paper trials that deny the defendants a fundamental fair-trial right to challenge the evidence and mount a defense," said Sahr MuhammedAlly, a lawyer for the advocacy group Human Rights First who has studied the proceedings. "So any convictions you get are fundamentally flawed."
The head of Afghanistan's national intelligence agency, Amrullah Saleh, said his investigators did their best to develop their own evidence against the suspects. But he added that the Afghan judicial system remained crippled by problems more than six years after the fall of the Taliban.
Since 2002 the Bush administration has pressed dozens of foreign governments to prosecute the Guantánamo prisoners from their countries as a condition of the men's repatriation. But many of those governments — including such close American allies as Britain — have objected, saying the American evidence would not hold up in their courts.
Afghanistan represents perhaps the most notable exception. Afghan authorities now have tried 82 of the former prisoners since October and referred more than 120 other cases for prosecution.
Of the prisoners who have been through the makeshift Afghan court, 65 have been convicted and 17 acquitted, says a report on the prosecutions by Human Rights First that is to be made public today.
U.S. officials defended their role in providing information for the Afghan trials.
"These are not prosecutions that are being done at the request or behest of the United States government," said Sandra Hodgkinson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detention policy. "These are prosecutions that are being done by Afghans for crimes committed on their territory by their nationals."
Saudi prisoner calls trial a sham
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — A Saudi prisoner on Wednesday denounced the war-crimes case against him as a politically motivated "sham" and had himself removed from the courtroom in symbolic protest.
Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza Al-Darbi, 33, whose brother-in-law was among the hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001, told the military judge hearing his terror conspiracy case that he wanted neither legal representation nor to be present at his trial.
Al-Darbi has been charged with conspiracy and material support for terrorism for allegedly training with al-Qaida and plotting to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Al-Darbi, whose case is one of seven going before the military commissions, has yet to enter a plea and made clear he wouldn't return for future sessions.
Los Angeles Times
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