Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 5, 2008

Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden?s former chauffeur, is presently being tried by a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Hamdan?s trial by military commission ? the first convened under a law passed in 2006 ? permits both hearsay testimony and evidence extracted through torture, as long as the prosecution insists that such tainted evidence is ?reliable.? The prosecution was permitted to withhold hundreds of pages of evidence from the defense. These are just some of the ways military tribunals are rigged to favor the prosecution.

That same 2006 law, the Military Commissions Act, permits the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects even if they are acquitted of all charges. Admiral David Thomas, commander of the Gitmo facility, has said that Hamdan would remain a prisoner even if he is found innocent.

Where the State can extract confessions through torture, and continue to imprison those who are acquitted, trials serve no purpose other than propaganda.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.