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The Federal District Court for the District of Columbia faulted the Department of Defense for not properly determining the legal status of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay and for imposing rules of evidence that violate fair trial standards. Judge James Robertson issued the ruling in the habeas corpus petition of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who is accused of being Osama bin Laden’s driver.

“This ruling should put the final nail into the coffin of the military commissions,” said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch. “They should never have been created in the first place and their implementation has been a disaster.”

The federal court ruled that Hamdan must be treated as a prisoner of war unless and until a competent tribunal determines otherwise. As a prisoner of war, he may only be tried by court-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and not by military commission. The administration has refused to hold the tribunals required by the Geneva Conventions because the President had decided none of the detainees at Guantanamo were entitled to prisoner of war status.

The court also ruled that the military commissions could not proceed until their rules were changed to permit Hamdan access to all commission sessions and evidence against him. The rules now permit the commission to exclude the accused from classified evidence and closed commission sessions, although his attorney has access. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the accused at a court-martial does have the right to be present when witnesses testify or evidence is introduced, and the court found no justification for the commission’s departure from existing court-martial rules.

Human Rights Watch has long insisted the military commissions established by the Bush administration in November 2001 are fatally flawed because they do not meet international fair trial standards. The commissions deprive defendants of independent judicial oversight by a civilian court, impose severe restrictions on the right to conduct a defense, and permit military trials for offenses committed outside of an armed conflict.

The ruling today put a sudden halt to the pre-trial proceedings in the Hamdan case which began today at Guantanamo Bay. A Human Rights Watch observer, Wendy Patten, was attending the hearings.

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